


Breakdown

by unicornsandbutane



Category: Dredd (2012), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Dirty Talk, Exhibitionism, M/M, Masturbation, Past Abuse, Rape Fantasy, Rimming, Rough Sex, Techie has a Sad Life, descriptions of violence, mentions of bondage, mentions of somnophilia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 17:58:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 33,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17248832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicornsandbutane/pseuds/unicornsandbutane
Summary: After being dishonorably discharged from the US Navy, Matt knows he doesn't want to go home to Utah, and doesn't want to face his family, so he buys a junker of a car and starts driving, no destination in mind. He thinks he'll work out a plan on the way, but he still hasn't figured it out when his car breaks down, on a lonely stretch of the I-5 heading south, with no company but the rows and rows of peach trees that fill yet another roadside farm. Then, a beautiful man comes out of the trees, offers him free automotive advice, and scampers away. In the following days, while Matt's car is fixed at the only garage in the pathetic truck stop town that borders the orchard, he sees the man a few more times, but can't imagine the wild ride he's in for when the man begs for his help to escape a hell-on-earth hidden between the peach trees.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all, this one is a bit dark, but it is officially the 90th fic on my Ao3, meaning I've completed my 2018 new years resolution at the LAST MINUTE! Please heed the warnings, and let me know if there are any other tags you think I should add.

Sometimes the low hillocks were sun-baked and dry, gilded by close-cropped dead grasses. Sometimes, their rises were blackened and charred, the dirt beneath what Matt assumed was ash streaking like scars in the velvety skin of the earth. Sometimes there were no hills at all, just endless flat expanses stretching out to the yawning horizon, bands of yellow and green meeting brown and blue as field after field of corn, of garlic, of strawberries and soy lay silent under the open sky. And sometimes, there were trees.

Dry trees climbed in regular rows over the natural landscape. Lush trees heavy with late August fruit waved sullenly as cars sped past their fences. Hand-painted signs beckoned all comers for almonds, berries, fresh melons. Now and then black cows stood staring at the road, clustered in the shade of transmission towers, and then there were trees again.

Matt didn't really know where he was. He was fairly sure he was somewhere north of Bakersfield, but he hadn't seen an exit for a while, or any indications of how far he was from Los Angeles. That didn't concern him as much as how rapidly the temperature gauge was climbing on his dashboard, though. The outside temperature had been 106 when he'd last stopped for gas, and the sun had only climbed higher since then. He'd been keeping a wary eye out for warning lights, but as the needle ticked over into the red he knew there was nothing he could do but pull over and wait.

Gravel kicked up as he peeled off the interstate, and his axles creaked on the uneven shoulder. Pulling up alongside a white painted fence, into the meager shade offered by a row of meticulously cultivated peach trees, he stepped out of his car into a patch of jimsonweed. The white trumpet-shaped flowers bruised under his work boots, and he remembered vaguely some public health scare in his youth, a story that turned out to be mostly false about teenagers reportedly eating jimsonweed seeking a cheap high and getting hospitalized for poisoning. The weed made the air smell a bit like tortillas for just a second and seemed to grow wild on that side of the fence, as high as his knees as he trampled through it. He pulled the kerchief from around his forehead to mop the sweat from his face before using it to grip the searing hood of his car.

Glaring at the engine, he tried to recall what one was meant to do with an overheated car. It wasn't his area of expertise. Bent over the confusing assortment of parts, he nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard a voice say, "Don't remove the radiator cap, whatever you do."

Standing on the other side of the fence was a man with long, lank hair and a faded pair of overalls, a sweaty yellow shirt, and perhaps the largest blue eyes Matt had ever seen. Pale and thin even under the California sun, the man looked more like some kind of faerie creature than a farmhand. His fingers were wrapped with bandages, each one blackened with dirt, and his lip kept twitching like he wasn't quite sure he ought to have said anything, and he was so impossibly beautiful in the dappled light filtering through the trees that Matt couldn't say anything but "What?"

"The... the radiator cap. Don't, um. Touch it." He'd started looking back to the trees. Probably he was trying to get back to work.

"Oh," Matt mumbled. "Thanks." He wasn't even totally sure where the radiator cap /was/, and could feel sweat gathering. He crossed his arms to hide it, feeling oddly self-conscious in front of someone who clearly labored through the hottest part of the day, and was himself drenched with sweat. The man's eyes followed the motion though, stayed trained on his chest. Was this guy checking him out? Matt's heart did something unfamiliar in his chest. Should Matt say something? There had to be a first time for everything.

"You're um. In the Navy?" the man asked, tucking a lock of hair behind his ear.

Of course. He was just reading Matt's shirt. He glanced down at the yellow letters on dark blue cotton. "Yeah," he said, then remembered himself. "I mean no. I mean. Not anymore. I... left the service."

The other man nodded, a little slowly, didn't meet Matt's eyes. Matt wondered what assumptions this person was making about him based on that information alone. Considering the "Jesus Saves" and peeling "Vote to Make America Great Again" signs he'd seen along the road thus far, he'd surmised that this county was fairly right-leaning. Generally, veterans were hailed as heroes in those kinds of places, with no question as to their service history, or the black marks on their records. Still, the guy eyed him curiously, before a hot wind gusted past them and brought with it the smells of peaches and fertilizer. The man smoothed his ruffled hair.

"Your car," he said, "Um, I think your carburetor is shot. And uh. Y-your belt is pretty um. Nicked up. There's a garage, in town, but I don't know if they'll have parts for a 1972 Chrysler New Yorker."

Matt looked under the hood again, then back at the man. God, he was still so damn beautiful it made Matt clench his jaw to bite down on anything dangerous he might say. "Are you a mechanic?" he asked instead. It came out sounding sarcastic, like he didn't believe the man, but he didn't think Chrysler models of the early 70s were such common knowledge.

"No, I'm... no. I just, uh. It's not important." He gave a funny little shrug and then turned sharply, as if hearing something from far away. Like a dog turning toward a whistle. Matt hadn't heard anything, but the man said, "I should go," and looked Matt over one last time before scurrying off into the rows of trees. Matt watched him go, accepting that he'd scared someone off again, and settled in to wait through the hottest hours of the day.

He sat in his car with the doors open, and sweated. Even stripped to his shorts and undershirt, he felt the heat like a collar, holding him down. He tried to read. He tried to write a letter to his mother. She probably expected he'd head home to Provo after he left the Navy, and he couldn't think of a good excuse to tell her why he hadn't. No matter what he did, the heat gathered between his fingers, under his hair, between his thighs. He sat with his legs spread and watched the sunlight shift, watched the shadows of the peach trees lean away. When the failing light turned golden-orange between the branches, he thought about the man he'd met-- well, perhaps 'met' was too strong a word. They hadn't even exchanged names, just free automotive advice. Matt didn't know what a bad carburetor would do to his car, or even what a carburetor was. With the engine cooled sufficiently, he closed the hood, and stared out into the peach trees for another long moment before folding himself back into the car and merging cautiously onto the I-5. The green exit sign was largely obscured by a white plywood sign with red lettering advertising sweet, fresh peaches.

The "town" the mystery man had mentioned wasn't really even that. It was a gas station, a Rodeway Inn, and a Denny's. The "garage" sat in a metal structure, a half cylinder squatting on the asphalt behind the gas station's office. It was crowded with tires and parts and reeked sharply of engine grease. When Matt's car pulled up, a heavy man rolled up off of a green and pink floral couch to meet him. The man could only be the mechanic, appraising Matt's car in badly stained coveralls and, incredibly, some kind of leather cap resembling those worn by the Druids. How he could stand it in the heat Matt didn't know. Unsticking himself from his seat, Matt climbed out of the car as the mechanic shook his head.

"That black exhaust doesn't look good. Car like this could be worth something if it was taken care of."

"It was a junker when I bought it," Matt grumbled sourly. The mechanic made a considering noise. The patch above his breast pocket said 'Plutt'.

"Well, I can already tell you'll need a new carburetor. Let's have a look under the hood and see what else is happening."

Just as easily as Mr. 'Plutt' could see the car would need new parts, Matt could see this was going to be expensive. It wasn't money he had to give away, really, not if he wanted something to start a new life with. He crossed his arms over his chest.

"Belt'll need replacing."

Matt nodded. So far the mystery peach farmer had been right on the money.

"Beyond that, I'll need to do more diagnostics. That's $45, plus parts and labor. Cash or credit?"

"Cash."

Mr. 'Plutt' gave him a slow nod, rubbing his lip as he continued to appraise the car, and Matt handed over the keys. He yanked his duffel out of the passenger seat and hefted it on his shoulder towards the Denny's.

"Come back in the morning!" Mr. 'Plutt' called, and Matt waved from the road.

A Denny's was basically the same anywhere in America, smelling of sausage and griddled potatoes. He slid into an empty booth and set his duffel beside him, pulled a slightly sticky menu from the holder behind the ketchup. A shadow fell over his table and he looked up, fully expecting a waitress and being instead just a few thrilling inches from that mystery peach farmer from before, still painfully beautiful even under the yellow artificial light. Matt blinked at him, and pushed his glasses up his nose.

"I um, I thought you'd left," the man said. Matt had almost said the same thing, but reined it in at the last second.

"Not with my car as messed up as you said it was." He tried to school the sullen set of his expression. He'd been told it was off-putting.

The man shuffled from foot to foot.

"Sit." Matt directed, then, "I mean. Do you want. To sit down?" He winced. He was not good with words. Or people. The stranger slid in opposite him in the booth anyway, and pushed his sleeves up. His yellow shirt and red hair were striking against the green pleather booth, as he brushed a few stray crumbs from the formica tabletop.

"I um. I can't stay," he explained quickly. "Just. Don't let Unkarr gouge the prices on you. There's a magazine stand in the lobby at the inn. Should be a copy of AutoTrader there so you can compare prices with what he's claiming. If you wanna be really picky about it you could phone up NAPA. You can google them."

“I don’t have a computer or smartphone or anything.” He realized he was putting up roadblocks, negating the advice of someone who was just trying to help. His mother had warned him against that from childhood, but it was as if he couldn’t help being contrary.

“The phone book, then,” the man forged ahead, still speaking in that sort of nervous way. “It stands for N-National Automotive Parts Association. Or, uh, Administration. Something like that. Um. Just so you know I don’t mean the, you know, the county.”

Matt tried not to think too much about the way the man sat, poised as if ready to run. Matt had that effect on people. If they only got to know him they'd-- he clenched his fist under the table and took a deep breath, trying to keep his expression pleasant.

"That's really smart," he said. Maybe he could make up for what he'd said before. "Can I get you... something to eat?" He hated the way that sounded, like he was taking pity on the man's thin wrists. "I mean, you've helped me out twice today. I feel like I could do something. For you."

The man looked at him for a tense moment, wide-eyed. He leaned forward, looked like he was about to tell Matt a secret, but then his eyes darted to the window and he sat back again, looking down at his arms and beginning to scratch at a long scab on his arm. Matt supposed farm work came with its dangers.

"I can't," the man said, finally. "I'm not even supposed to be off the farm." His mouth contorted, like he was swallowing his words. “I really wish, I mean, I want to, though,” he said quietly.

It was a little late for work, but Matt had no idea how orchards were run. "Can-- Would you tell me your name?"

"William." The man's lips twisted. "Techie." His hands clenched for a moment before he laid his fingers out flat on the table. "Either works. But you probably won't be seeing much of me." He rubbed at his eyes, red-rimmed and itchy looking.

The place was essentially a truck stop. William/Techie had to live somewhere around there, and with a population that small, Matt didn't think it was so unlikely they'd cross paths again. So, he ignored that part and said, "My name’s Matt. I guess your friends call you Techie, because you know things about car parts?"

William/Techie gave him a pinched look. "Not many people call me that, actually."

Matt felt his brows draw close, but then the waitress appeared. She was young, maybe even still in high school, with the kind of earnest face that made Matt uncomfortable, made him wonder how someone can just BE that happy. Her name tag read 'Estrella', and she was perfectly chipper when she asked, "What can I getcha?" and informed Matt of the 10% military discount. Where did kids like her go to school? It had seemed from the highway like he was seeing into eternity on either side of the road, with nothing around for miles. But, this girl, the cooks, even Mr. Plutt had to live somewhere. They couldn't all live in those trailers on the peach farm.

He ordered a Grand Slam, and the waitress turned to Techie. He didn't even say anything, he just scrambled out of the booth and scurried out the door. The waitress watched this, a perplexed look on her face, tapping her pencil against her order booklet.

"Does he do that often?" Matt asked.

She turned back to him. "What, isn't he with you?"

 

The motel was not the worst accommodations he'd ever had. The walls were a strange sort of off-salmon color, and the rug was the color of barley. The heavy coverlet was burgundy, and thankfully free of cigarette burns. When he flicked on the light in the bathroom, the tiny shower looked clean enough. He dumped the dead weight of his duffel unceremoniously on the bed, watched it bounce, remembered some article he'd read years ago that told him that the majority of people who found a corpse in their motel mattress spent the night on top of it first, before reporting an 'odd smell' to the staff in the morning. He halfway considered stripping the bed and checking the mattress for a suspicious split, but, like every other person who had unwittingly slept on top of some unfortunate victim, decided he was too tired for due diligence on that sort of thing. The room didn't smell strange. It was probably fine.

He folded his glasses on the night stand and lay on his back, staring blearily up at the ceiling. He wondered if he'd ever again get used to the size of an ordinary bed. He'd slept in ordinary beds most of his life, he reasoned with himself, but a few years in the service, crammed into a bunk, seemed to have done something to his mind. Even months after he'd left, he found himself grabbing for the curtain which would have separated his claustrophobic space from the crowd of other guys sandwiched in with him, their bunks in stacks. One of the others had once said of the bunks: "Nice of them to build us these boxes. Saves them the trouble of buying us coffins if the ship goes under in the night." The guy above Matt's bunk had rattled his curtain and said, "What's this, then? The flag for my military funeral?"

Matt turned over, felt the static in the bedcover humming over him. He tried not to think about how much of his savings this impromptu stop would consume-- the room, food, parts, labor... maybe it would be cheaper if he bought a basket of peaches from the stand by the orchard's fence, and subsisted off of those until his car was running again. It might not be nutritionally complete but he'd survive. At least for a few days. After that, he'd have to figure out what he was going to do next.

His room was on the second floor, and the heavy velvet curtain almost blocked out the light from the street lamps illuminating the parking lot. He could hear the beep and click of people using their key cards to enter and leave the room next door, their steps passing his door and then receding. Peeling himself up off the bed to grab for his glasses and peek around the curtain, he watched a middle-aged couple hefting camping equipment off the racks of a mid-sized sedan, tromp up the stairs, pass his window with what appeared to be a tent, swipe a key card, and fight the bundle into the room before going back for another load. They carefully checked that the door was fully closed and locked behind them before setting off down the stairs, unlocking their car, popping the trunk, pulling out a mountaineering backpack and a portable gas stove, locking the car, and starting the process over again. People that paranoid wouldn't accept Matt's help even if he felt like offering, which he didn't. He trudged back to the bed and wished he had earplugs to block out the racket, kicked off his shoes and rolled his duffel off the side so it thumped to the carpet.

It had been a long day.

He set his glasses aside again, rubbed his face. He'd been sweating in his car for hours before pulling into Mr. Plutt's lot, and would probably benefit from a shower. He rolled over, stared at the open door to the bathroom, and was asleep on top of the coverlet in minutes.

He regretted it in the morning, coming out of a half-remembered dream with an odd sense of unreality. Before he put his glasses on, he lay blinking for long moments, uncomprehending of where he was. It was as though his brain couldn't process the idea of having slept without a cover, without changing out of his sour clothes. He'd had the sense that after a military life he'd be able to sleep anywhere, and to a degree that was true. It was waking up that seemed to be the problem. Somehow, even with a bright slice of sunlight slashing across the bed through the gap in the curtains, the nightmares seemed to hold him, threatened to keep him, made him mop fresh sweat from under his jaw, and from the nape of his neck.

He washed the clammy terror from his skin with a shower that lost its heat halfway through, and shoved his sweaty shirt into the duffel with a tight-packed sediment of others. Eventually he'd stop somewhere and make use of a coin-op laundry, but this would not be the day. Eventually he'd find someplace more permanent to perform his ablutions, a different mirror to look into as he struggled to get a comb through his wet curls, a different sink to rinse clean of toothpaste. He resettled his glasses, peered at himself in the yellow light. Sometimes, in certain conditions, he could see the scar along his left cheekbone. The bruises had long since faded, but that little scar would always be there to remind him of everything he wasn't. That scar, the matching ones on the knuckles of his right hand, and occasionally, restless dreams that followed him into wakefulness.

Leaving the room, hearing the latch click behind him, he was reminded of the neurotic couple from the night before. Already, their car was gone. He supposed he shouldn't be surprised, he'd slept past ten, but it was a little strange seeing the parking lot completely empty. The motel's build wasn't old enough or quaint enough to have that nostalgic /abandoned Americana/ look, the photos of which were popular among military wives, so it just looked vaguely unfriendly with no one around to give it life.

Already heat had begun to seep into the pavement. Matt could smell bacon sizzling on the griddles at the Denny's, borne on a warm mid-morning breeze. He poked his nose into the motel office, where the wizened old innkeeper sat on a stack of pillows behind the desk, thumbing through a glossy romance novel. "Help yourself," she said, inclining her thin eyebrows at a small, scuffed side table with strangely ornate cabriole legs squashed in between two mismatched armchairs and beneath a handwritten sign: "BREAKFAST BAR". A coffee machine sat atop it, with a stack of styrofoam cups, a selection of sugars and single-serve creamers, and, to Matt's surprise, a still-warm freshly baked blueberry bundt cake. The tiny woman pinned him with her gaze through coke bottle glasses over the top of her paperback. "Take two pieces. You're a big fella."

He wrapped them in a napkin and shuffled out of the small office with the latest copy of Auto Trader, and looked around for a good place to sit. A large, new pickup truck careened past him on jacked-up tires, music blaring out of the open window as it pulled into the gas station. A pair of men in blue button-down shirts with their names stitched onto iron-on patches sipped sodas from plastic chairs in the shade of the mini mart. Matt turned the other direction to see if there was any shade by the fence of the peach orchard. That was the only reason, he told himself, swallowing his guilt over trying to catch a peek at William-- or did he prefer Techie?-- again.

In a small patch of asphalt surrounded on three sides by the peach farm's white fence, a produce stand sat with a red and white striped awning. A banner proclaimed, "Mama's Fresh Peaches" in large text, with a printed photograph of a smiling woman in pearl earrings and a 1950's hairstyle holding a halved fruit. When Matt got closer, he saw the woman herself, sitting on a folding chair in the red-tinted shade under the plastic cover. She didn't look much like the photo. The scar under one eye, for example, must have been photoshopped out, though he tried not to look too long at that. He knew what a hypocrite he was being even taking note of it. She wore a scowl under a woven cowboy hat, a tie-up top over a white tank, worn cowboy boots, and daisy dukes. One foot was propped up on the edge of the plastic fold-up table, and her heavily made-up eyes followed him as he approached. Her lacquered nails drummed on the cash box in her lap.

"Howdy," she greeted, her face pulling into a smile once Matt had ducked under the banner and into the meager shade of the stand. She slowly moved the cash box under her chair, giving him an uninterrupted view of her inner thigh. He swallowed, and watched the quick quirk of her brows as she dropped her foot to the floor and allowed her chair to rock forward with a clack against the pavement. "What can Mama do for you?"

Matt chewed the inside of his lip, and told himself it was just some down-home affectation that this woman referred to herself as 'Mama'. Nothing weird. She stood and leaned on her hands, tilting her face up just inside his personal space. He fought the urge to step back.

"Um," he said, casting his eyes to the produce as a distraction. Boxes of whole peaches, both white and yellow varieties, crowded the table top. Bags of dried peaches filled in every empty space. Beneath the table, plastic bottles of peach juice huddled together in the shade.

“In this heat, it’ll be the juice you’ll want,” she said, bending so he could see down her shirt and pulling a plastic bottle from under the table. “I know you’d think peach juice is too thick to quench you, but I promise nothing satisfies quite like this.”

The cake would probably make him thirsty, but he didn’t need to buy peach juice. There weren’t any clearly-stated prices, anyway.

"How ‘bout this. You want a little taste?" the woman asked sweetly. Matt's eyes widened as she straightened up and her fingers went to her belt loops, but then it was only to draw a folding knife from her pocket. She handled it slowly, turning it over in her hand, before flicking it open suddenly, an audible click, as her eyes snapped up to meet his. She smiled at him as she plucked a yellow peach from the top of the pile.

"See how ripe they are?" Her thumbnail pierced the thin skin, revealing a half moon of the tender flesh. Juice ran from the little scar, dripped into the well between her thumb and forefinger, but she ignored it, turning the peach over to bare its cleft. The knife flickered in her hand, and then she drew it slowly up the peach's natural seam, a quarter turn, and then down again, carving a glistening slice from the sun-warmed fruit. With a practiced twist, she brought the slice away from its stone, and held it, balanced on the flat of her knife, towards Matt.

"Go on now," she crooned, "Eat up."

Matt looked at the shiny yellow morsel. The way she held it out, it looked like she wanted Matt to take it from the blade with his teeth.

He was almost ready to tell her no thanks and just go buy a coffee at the Denny’s to go with his cake and then vow never to come within eyesight of this stand again, when a quiet “oh,” drew his attention away from the woman and her peaches, and toward the fence.

William (though ‘Techie’ might’ve been cuter) was standing there, his hand still on the open gate, staring at the scene before him with a palpable terror. Matt realized it looked like the woman was pointing a knife at him, desperately hoped Techie didn’t think he’d threatened her. She turned too, looked at Techie, and noticed the look on his face. Her eyes found Matt’s again, then slid over to Techie once more as she pulled the slice of peach from the knife herself, catching the flesh with her teeth and chewing slowly.

“Seems you two know each other,” she said, around the mouthful, her tone light and easy. She swallowed, and smiled. “Ain’t this a funny little world?”

“We don’t,” Techie insisted. Matt knew it shouldn’t have stung like it did.

“Nope,” he agreed anyway. “It must’ve looked bad, you coming out here to see your boss with a knife pointed at me. She was cutting a slice of peach for me.”

“O-oh,” Techie forced out, but he wasn’t good at keeping up the charade. If he wanted to keep it quiet that he’d left work when he was supposed to be on the clock, he was going to give himself away, with the way he was acting. The woman raised one eyebrow at Techie, waiting for him to say something more. Techie took the bait and dug himself deeper. “I just didn’t expect, um, to see anyone. Is all,” he said, and Matt could see the way the woman’s eye twitched.

“You didn’t expect we’d have any customers?” she asked, expression sharp. “Isn’t that where your wages come from?”

Matt’s skin crawled, and it wasn’t just the sweat prickling in the growing heat. Techie stammered, cowed under her unshakable smile and remorseless gaze.

“How much for the juice?” Matt asked, seeking any kind of way to cut the tension.

The woman turned slowly back to him, as if her hinges were rusty. “Five dollars,” she said, pleasantly.

He pulled some crumpled ones from his wallet, knowing that every dollar he spent was one he wouldn’t have to fix his car, or put into a deposit on an apartment somewhere. Some day. While the woman took his payment, Techie dropped off the cash box he was carrying and beat a hasty retreat into the trees. Matt tried not to make it obvious he was watching. With Techie gone, Matt, too, thought it was time to leave and slunk back toward the motel to find a cool place to sit.

It was getting near to noon, and there weren’t many shady spots left as the sun approached its zenith. He crowded himself under an eave at the side of the building, wanting for some reason to be out of sight from the road. Not that he thought that woman would come after him or anything like that, he just felt... like he’d dealt with people enough for a little while. He shuffled the magazine open and leafed through, hoping to find a general baseline for carburetors. He didn’t know if his car would need a specific kind. Automotive repair was not his area of specialization, and despite what some members of his family might’ve thought, trying to get him to be their mechanic for free, there was very little overlap between maintaining tactical air navigation equipment on a naval vessel, and knowing what was going on under the hood of a four-door sedan. He pushed his glasses up his nose as they slid down, feeling the sweat on his face where they touched his skin. This would be easier with the help of Techie, a strangely knowledgeable peach farmer. Maybe he repaired tractors or something? Did they use tractors to farm peaches? Probably just trucks. That would make more sense. He picked at his bundt cake, and sipped the peach juice. It was very thick, the juice, and also filling. At least it was cold.

Finally, he felt he’d learned as much as he could from the magazine and returned it to the front office of the motel. The tiny woman was still there, and it seemed she’d made serious headway on her novel in the time Matt had been gone, and was almost done with it. It had a very hairy man on the cover wearing a pair of bandoliers crossed over his burly chest. Matt returned the magazine to the holder, and the tiny woman cleared her throat.

“You should get over to the garage pretty soon, or Unkarr will charge you a ‘holding fee’,” she warned, regarding him casually over the book. 

“I didn’t agree to that,” Matt sputtered, but she only shrugged.

“It makes him feel like he has control over something,” she explained passively, flicking a page. Matt frowned but pitched his empty juice bottle and buttery napkins into a plastic bin in the corner, and headed out into the sun again.

Across the street, his car was already sitting out in the lot, white paint harsh in the bright sunlight. Mr. Plutt emerged again from inside the garage at the sight of him.

“Well, you were lucky,” the mechanic said, in a way that made Matt think Mr. Plutt looked for the most expensive parts he might’ve replaced. “These models have some pretty common fuel pump problems, but yours seems okay for now.” With a greasy rag he lifted the hood and pointed out the new belt. “Replaced your belt, and cleaned out in here. Your air intake filter needs changing, I can do that for $118. Replaced your carburetor, too. If I hadn’t had the parts on hand, you’d have had to wait a week while I ordered a new one.”

“I’ll skip the filter for now,” he said. Maybe when he got to L.A., or wherever he was going, he could teach himself how to install one. Mr. Plutt gave him an appraising look.

“Alright, then it’s $45 for diagnostics, $15 for the belt, $75 for labor, and $585 for the carb.” He slammed the hood with finality, and pulled a creased invoice from the pocket of his coveralls. Matt’s blood boiled as he stared down the numbers.

“You’re not charging me $585 for a used carburetor, that’s what they cost brand new!” He shouted, feeling his back straighten, his shoulders align. Unbent to his full height, he was maybe half a foot taller than Mr. Plutt, and he instinctively used it, his arms drawing up almost as if he was readying for a fight. “That’s almost TWICE what some cost, right out of the box! Are you /kidding/?” he fumed, feeling the muscles in his jaw tense. “Are you trying to take me for a ride, here? You just told me you had the parts on hand, or else you ‘would’ve had to order a new one’. What kind of money do you think we make in the U.S. Navy, huh?! Do you take me for an idiot?!” He dug his fingernails into the meat of his palms, knowing he was probably red in the face, and then saw the nervous way the mechanic was looking at him. Counting backwards from ten, Matt took a deep breath in through his nose, released it through his mouth. God damn it, he was supposed to be working on this. Probably everyone for half a mile heard him shouting. This wasn’t worth getting angry over. He should’ve asked the guy calmly to reconsider the charge, taking into account that the parts were second-hand. Instead he’d lost his cool, like always. His nails bit harder into his palm.

“You think it’s easy to get parts all the way out here?” the mechanic asked, but his voice had a tinny, frightened quality.

“You’re on a major shipping route,” Matt grit out. If the sheer number of trucks crowding the freeway were any indication, he imagined it wasn’t too hard to get deliveries. He supposed the mechanic could threaten not to return his keys to him until the invoice was paid. He didn’t have that kind of money. “That’s an outrageous charge,” he stated, reining in his temper bit by bit.

“Fine,” Mr. Plutt conceded, waspishly. “$199 for the /pre-owned/ carb.” He pulled a pen from his breast pocket and clicked it loudly to amend the invoice. $334 was still a lot of money, but it was better than $720. He waited while Mr. Plutt got his keys, and counted out the money. He didn’t like Benjamin Franklin’s disapproving stare, looking up at him from each of three worn hundred-dollar bills. When he took his keys, he watched Mr. Plutt check and check the money again, holding each bill up to the light, making sure it was all there. Matt chose not to comment, thanked him roughly, and climbed back into his sun-baked car. Now that his car was fixed, he figured he ought to clear out of town pretty soon, before Mr. Plutt decided to slash his tires for some repeat business.

Pulling into the motel parking lot, he noted there had been a few new arrivals: a newish Honda with a Clinton/Kaine ‘16 sticker on the bumper, a Toyota from the 90s with faded, spotted paint, and a large and extensively customized motorcycle that was clearly well cared for. Matt parked several spaces away from any of them, and trudged up the stairs to his rented room. The AC worked well enough and he sat in front of it for a moment. He’d probably missed the check-out time. The lady at the desk had very likely told him what it was, but after the day he’d had, it had slipped from his mind completely. He’d have to go ask. Why hadn’t she mentioned it the two times he was downstairs?

He let himself fall back across the bed, looking upside-down at the digital clock on the bedside table. It was early afternoon, and probably the hottest part of the day. He wondered if he should wait until evening, to be out of the heat. Of course, he didn’t want to be driving into the sun. He closed his eyes, trying to estimate how much money he had left. Not a whole lot. He knew it would be difficult to find housing on just that, and harder still to find a job given his history. Maybe he’d hit the library in the next big city he came to, and look up what businesses would hire a felon. Having a dishonorable discharge on his record was basically the same thing.

It was easy to doze with the rhythmic whirring of the AC filling the darkened room. When he woke up it was hours later, almost five, and he was starving. He went down to the office to see about staying another night.

“It isn’t like we’re busy,” the tiny woman said, when he asked to extend his stay. “My friend at the service station tells me you shouted in Unkarr’s face when he tried to overcharge you for a part. You’d be surprised how many people don’t even question it, pay whatever he tells them.”

“I got some good advice from a local, told me to look at AutoTrader and make sure he wasn’t trying to pull something.”

The tiny woman actually put her book down. “Better not tell Unkarr who it was— we all have to live here, you know.”

“No, I wouldn’t. The guy has enough problems without that big asshole out for his blood,” Matt said. Techie’s boss seemed like a real piece of work, and he couldn’t imagine farm work was easy.

“Was it either of the guys from the service station? Or that happy girl from the Denny’s?”

Matt squirmed a little under the intensity of having her undivided attention for the first time.

“No, none of them,” he said. He wasn’t sure he should go blabbing about Techie’s help to anyone. Especially someone who might talk to that woman who called herself ‘Mama’.

“Well there aren’t that many people living here,” the tiny woman said.

“I don’t know anyone here anyway,” Matt deflected. “But I’ll leave in the morning and be out of your hair.

“Alright, whatever you say,” she said, lifting her book again. “Safe travels.”

Matt ordered a burger at the Denny’s and took it to go. He was getting antsy about this tiny truck stop, itching to leave despite having just extended his stay. He’d leave early in the morning, before it got too hot, and continue south. He kept telling himself he was going to Los Angeles, but maybe he was really headed towards San Diego. That was where he’d done his ET training. It wasn’t as if he had any contacts there, any bridges he hadn’t burned, but maybe it was just familiar enough, and yet, still largely unknown, that his internal compass pointed there, instead of back to Utah. He hadn’t out-and-out told his family about the circumstances of his discharge from the Navy, either, but he assumed they’d gotten a letter.

He ate alone in the motel room and flipped through channels on the TV. He didn’t want to pay for extra channels, and didn’t want to watch the news and ended up just turning the TV off and eating in silence, watching the light shift on the wall as the AC made the curtains flutter slightly. It was strange to think that just a few months ago, he never had a single quiet moment. There was always someone walking around, or the thrum of the aircraft carrier’s tons and tons of machinery, always activity. But, having spent the time since leaving driving, on his own, in a little bubble separated from the rest of the world, he’d grown accustomed to the silence, having only his own thoughts for company. It was probably better that way. He was terrible with people. How he ever survived aboard a carrier with some 6000 other personnel, he didn’t know.

Lying in the bed and staring at the popcorn ceiling, Matt tried to visualize where he was headed. He’d drive south on the 5 until he started seeing signs for Los Angeles. Then he’d... stay in another motel like this one, he supposed, until he could land something more permanent. Even though he knew nothing about L.A., like, where rent was cheap, or where to go looking for a job, he knew he couldn’t go back to San Diego. What if he ran into someone he knew from the base? Unlikely, but still... he didn’t want to talk about his discharge with people who were still serving.

Shortly after he’d been sent packing, he’d learned that there were law firms dedicated to helping people like him change their discharge status from ‘dishonorable’ to ‘general’. He wasn’t sure the distinction meant very much really, since pretty much everyone got an ‘honorable’ discharge unless they fucked up really badly. Like he had. In any case he couldn’t afford to pay a lawyer to try and paper over it, and he didn’t have the support network to help him through it even if he did. So. He’d just have to keep moving forward and try to figure it out as he went.

It was past 3AM when he next woke up, according to the dull red numbers on the digital clock in front of his face. They were close enough that he could read them without his glasses, but he groped for the frames anyway, thinking that he’d slept more on this road trip than he ever had in his life. What woke him? It wasn’t like him to bolt awake like that unless it was due to a nightmare, but he couldn’t remember having—

There was a click in the darkness and he was on his feet in an instant, grabbing for the first thing he could close his hand around: an empty glass from the bedside. As weapons went it wasn’t the best, but it would make a decent projectile.

There were several seconds of silence, and Matt’s shoulders relaxed. He was being ridiculous. He was in a motel in a tiny truck stop. Who in the hell would break in?

“Matt?”

He dropped behind the vague shape of the bed in the dark. His eyes were adjusting and now he could definitely see a silhouette by the door. Calling his name.


	2. Chapter 2

“Who’s there?!” Matt demanded, thinking about other points of exit, or improvised weapons. The lamps were bolted to the walls, so that was out.

“Um, Techie. Or William. I’m not... here to rob you.”

In the dark he could see the outline of Techie, raising his hands up in surrender.

“Please keep it down,” Techie hissed. “I can’t... if they find me, I dunno what they— I-I can give you everything I have just— you’re leaving in the morning? Please t-take me with you!”

Matt flicked on a light and Techie pressed himself into the corner by the door.

“What are you— oh, Jesus.” There was blood crusted on Techie’s face. There was a puffy, angry scab on his forehead that looked fresh, looked like it had bled a lot, over his left eye and down his sweaty, sallow cheek. “What happened to you?” He had a creeping suspicion it hadn’t been a farming accident. The cuts looked too... regular. Like they’d been deliberately sliced into Techie’s skin.

Matt took a cautious step toward the other man, who quailed visibly, but backed up against the wall there was nowhere else he could go. He was still wearing his long-sleeved yellow shirt, and the collar was dotted with drying blood, as well. Incongruously, he was wearing some extremely brief cut-off denim shorts— maybe shorter than his boss’s had been that morning— and a pair of very beat-up red Converse high-tops. Matt’s heart pulled. Like this, Techie looked like something from Matt’s spank bank, even including the blood, and he felt cold self-disgust coil in his belly. In the unnatural pink glow from the yellow light reflecting off of the salmon walls, Techie looked unreal... or maybe that was just the sensation of waking suddenly at 3:19 AM. Matt told himself that.

“I can’t stay there anymore,” Techie forced out, not answering the question. His eyes were watery and pleading. “She took my p-passport, but I can’t, I can’t—!”

“What?!” Matt could hardly follow what was going on. His blood had run cold and he could feel a fresh sweat gathering at the base of his neck.

“Please, please be quiet... I don’t know if they’ve realized I left but I have to leave, and, and if you’re going in the morning, I can. I could hide in your trunk, I don’t mind, just ‘til we get to the next city, it doesn’t matter, I’ll, um, you can drop me off and I’ll walk to an embassy. I won’t bother you anymore, but I’m begging, begging you—!”

He actually dropped to his knees, clasped his hands in front of himself. Matt couldn’t take it, he moved forward quickly, pulled Techie up off the ground and into a hug. The image of Techie knelt, pleading for a little bit of human kindness would break Matt’s heart over and over again. Techie sniffled into Matt’s shoulder, but didn’t cry.

“Let me help you,” Matt said. “I don’t have much, but I can give you a ride, and, maybe, take you to get those cuts looked at.”

“I can’t afford a hospital. I don’t have insurance,” Techie mumbled into Matt’s shirt. Matt petted down the man’s narrow back, unsure if it was welcome, but trying to give comfort any way he could.

“Well at least come into the bathroom and we can wash them out. Get some of this blood off your face.” Techie nodded into Matt’s neck, and Matt walked them back across the room to the small bathroom. “Do you want a shower? You can use my shampoo. Or, I guess these little ones the motel provides...”

Techie sat quietly on the lid of the toilet, watching Matt read the label of the antibacterial soap.

“I can’t really offer you anything,” Techie blurted finally. “I know I said before I’d give you anything I have but, I don’t have any money. She— she kept my wages as p-payment for room and board. Showers. That kinda stuff.”

Matt looked at Techie in the mirror, met his eyes. “I’m pretty sure that’s illegal. And so is holding someone’s passport.”

“I know, but who would I tell? It’s n-not like she gave me access to a, a phone. You think lots of, of labor attorneys b-break down by the fence like you did?” He gripped the hem of his shirt, white-knuckled. “It’s a lost cause. I can’t f-fight her.” He sounded so small and defeated that Matt wanted to march out and go full vigilante on the woman.

“What about getting your passport?” Matt asked, suddenly very curious about where Techie was from if he wasn’t American. He didn’t have an accent.

“I’ll just get a ‘lost or stolen’ form from the embassy whenever I c-can. Worst case scenario they d-deport me, and that’d be fine. I can’t say my experiences here have been all that, you know, great.” His lank hair fell in his face as he studied the tiled floor. Matt wet a towel and started working the soap into a lather.

“Which embassy?” Matt asked, kneeling in front of Techie and lifting the towel. In the brighter light, the cuts looked a bit worse than he’d initially thought.

“Irish.”

Techie lifted his face so Matt could wipe away the trails and smears of dried blood. He winced when Matt got too close to the cuts, and Matt frowned, got up to rinse and re-wet the towel.

“This is probably going to sting,” Matt warned. He was as gentle as he could be, but Techie still grit his teeth when Matt touched the cloth to the wound. “Rubbing alcohol would probably be better,” Matt said, to distract Techie from the pain, “but I don’t have any here. I’m gonna clean this up as best I can, but you probably want to shower anyway just to make sure it really gets clean.”

Once the congealed blood was wiped away, he noticed something, and it made his stomach turn over.

The cuts formed a word.

Someone had carved a word into Techie’s /face/.

He must’ve been staring, because Techie met his eyes, miserably. “She told me it says ‘male’, because... because ‘faggot’ has too many c-curved letters in it.”

Matt didn’t know what to say, and it must have shown on his face because Techie kept talking.

“I know that d-doesn’t make a lot of sense. She was pretty fucking high. There’s a lot of meth around here.”

The matter-of-fact way he said it made Matt burn with anger and despair at the same time.

“We can buy you some Neosporin, so it doesn’t scar,” Matt promised, though he knew that was a pale comfort. What had this man been through?

“She already scarred me a couple times,” Techie confessed. He pulled the collar of his shirt to the side, and Matt could just see the shiny white lines over his collarbone. They spelled out the word ‘MAMA’. “She did this one when I... when I tried to run away before. So I wouldn’t forget where. You know. Who I belonged to.”

Matt swallowed the bile rising in his throat.

“She only does words when she’s really pissed off though. B-because they’re hard, I guess. I’m sorry. M-maybe I shouldn’t tell you this. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug.”

He looked desperate and fearful and Matt didn’t know what to do, so he just swiped the wet towel under Techie’s chin.

“You can tell me anything you want to,” he said.

Techie stared at him for a long moment, his lips working but no words coming out. Finally he took a deep breath, held it, and let it out in a long sigh.

“She didn’t b-believe me when I said we didn’t know each other. She was convinced I was whoring myself out to you or selling her secrets. I dunno where she got that but she was so fucking high it was impossible to tell her anything. So she tied my wrists to a radiator with wire, held me up by my hair, and did this. She said... she said I’d better hold still or she’d cut my eyes out. So I... s-so I let her do it.” The first tear fell as he was talking, and it was clear he was trying to hold them back, jolting with pain when his eyebrows furrowed and pulled on the cuts. “I let her. I let her do it,” he repeated, choking through sobs.

Matt was... not the best at consoling people. He reached out and stroked Techie’s greasy hair. “It’s not your fault,” he said. “She had you tied down. Listen. It’s not your fault.” He cupped his hands under Techie’s chin to look him in the eyes. “It was like you were a prisoner of war. You did what you had to, and now you’re out, and you can heal. I wouldn’t ordinarily hit a woman but if she comes after you I swear—“ He cut himself off, started counting backwards from ten to keep himself from getting too worked up. It would be helpful to no one if he let his anger get the best of him. He could hurt himself, or more likely, Techie, who had already suffered so much. He wouldn’t mean to, but he’d lashed out at people who didn’t deserve it before.

Techie scrubbed at his eyes, which looked even redder and puffier than usual.

“I’m gonna need to wash this shirt,” Techie mumbled. “If I can find the coins to do it.”

“Techie,” Matt said quietly, sitting back from the other man, looking up at him from the floor. His knees were starting to hurt. “How... how did you get involved in all of this? How’d you end up here?” Maybe it was none of his business, and maybe he shouldn’t ask, but if he was going to help Techie get out, he thought he’d need all the information he could get.

“I was on a work visa,” Techie said simply. “I wasn’t finding any work in Ireland and my dad wasn’t willing to support my arse any more, so I applied for this visa to get out of the country and try to learn some new skills. That’s how it was advertised, earn money and learn marketable stuff. It was through a recruiting f-firm here in California. I’m not, like, properly schooled in mechanics or coding or anything, so I thought if I had actual work experience doing something else I could. I dunno. S-start a new life, I guess. Happens a lot, some of the other workers told me. Folks come here on an H-1B v-visa and then get caught up. I started at another f-farm but I was no good in the fields. After I passed out from heatstroke one time the boss there decided to give me to. To Mama. She... um. She didn’t like my accent and so I learned to m-mimic an American one. She thought I sounded annoying. Probably couldn’t even go back to how I used to talk without going b-back to Ireland.”

It sounded like Techie had gone from one abusive situation to another to another again.

“This... look, you don’t have to worry about all that,” Techie said. “I’m, I don’t know how to repay you for driving me out of here. I can’t really give you gas money or anything.” He was pulling on the hem of his shirt again. “Um, I think you can guess just about the only thing I can offer you.”

It took Matt a second but when he realized what Techie was offering, he recoiled bodily. He stood without meaning to, smacked his hip hard into the corner of the sink, would probably have a bruise.

“You don’t have to do anything!” he insisted. “Techie, please, I don’t want to be the next person to take advantage of you. That would be horrible. I’m driving that way anyway, so it’s not a big deal. I promise. Please don’t think you need to offer me... anything.”

“I just. Yeah. I know that was crazy sounding. But I did break into your room so. I guess. You don’t have any reason to trust me to /not/ be crazy.” Techie scuffled his shoes on the tiles. “Pretty ironic, right? She cuts my face because she thinks I’m whoring myself out to you, and then I offer to do exactly that. I’m sorry, Matt. I’m so so sorry.”

“How did you do that, by the way?” Matt asked, knowing Techie was right and that perhaps Matt shouldn’t trust him outright just because he was cute and had given him automotive advice.

“Do what? Oh, break in? Um, so. Key-card locks are vulnerable to hacking. They have a master-key code you can exploit in a few different ways. It’s um. Some of Mama’s friends do debit card fraud, you know, with RFID readers, and they had me fixing broken ones so, I, um, I had one on hand.” From the front pocket of his shorts he pulled a small object the size of a cigarette lighter. “I just modified it a little.” Techie allowed Matt to inspect the device, and then said, “Please don’t report me to the police.”

“That’s fascinating. And terrifying,” Matt stated. “In the Navy, I was an electronics technician. Specifically, I was a radar systems tech. So this kinda stuff is really interesting to me. I dunno if any of my skills have any illicit applications though.”

“O-oh...” Techie stuttered, looking at his hands.

“Not that I think you went looking for that kind of thing.” He didn’t want to think of Techie as a thief or a crook.

“Matt, I’m gonna be honest with you. I don’t want you to think I’m a criminal. I’m really... I’m really tired of l-living like this. I was not strong enough for farm work but the boss at the first farm told Mama I knew mechanics and figured she could find a use for me, because. Because um. P-peaches are just her side hustle really. Her real thing is drugs. And she. She had me working on that, t-too. Plus she rents out space to those friends I m-mentioned.” He looked up at Matt, the bright fluorescent lighting casting deep shadows under his eyes. “My hands are all over everything in her whole, you know, operation. I’m starting from less than nothing. How do you try to make a life out of that?”

Matt looked away, studied the bland seascape painting on the wall. “I dunno. I’m trying to figure that out myself. See I was kicked out of the military for... for getting into a fight with my commanding officer. It was a bad one. I broke his cheek and his collarbone. He gave me this scar.” Tilting his face into the light, he pointed out the long line where his CO’s ring had gouged his cheek. “Having a dishonorable discharge on my record is... well it’s limiting, let’s say.”

Techie nodded, but didn’t say anything. After a long pause he stood, and pulled his shirt off over his head. With it off, Matt could see a lattice of other scars criss-crossing Techie’s upper chest. He had a long, soft, pale torso, and Matt felt a conflict of urges. He tried so hard not to stare, not at the scars, and not at the cute dip of Techie’s navel, which looked like it would be so nice to kiss and tickle.

‘What the fuck is wrong with me?’ Matt thought.

“Been a while since I’ve had a shower I didn’t have to pay for,” Techie said, turning towards the small stall and getting the hot water going. It was probably nearing 4AM and Matt didn’t know what he was supposed to do with himself if Techie was going to shower. Should he go off to bed? That didn’t seem right, leaving Techie alone. Then Techie unselfconsciously toed out of his shoes and wiggled out of his shorts and stepped under the spray and Matt had to tell himself he’d been in a communal shower hundreds of times and seeing another guy naked was no big deal. It was no big deal. Fuck’s sake, he needed to get his head on straight before he did something stupid like come on to someone who had just /offered sex to pay for a ride/. After that, even if by some miracle he managed to behave like a functional human for long enough to even ASK Techie if he wanted to be intimate with Matt, could he ever trust Techie’s answer? What if Techie only agreed out of some sense of obligation, feeling as though he owed Matt something? Feeling as though Matt expected something of him. A sour knot sat heavy in Matt’s stomach as he leaned against the sink, allowing steam to fill the room and begin to fog his glasses. He reminded himself that Techie had been through a series of horrors, and fixating on trying to get with him was wholly reprehensible.

“You said I could use your shampoo?” Techie asked, over the rush of the water.

“Yeah,” Matt replied thickly. “Whatever you want.”

Techie went back to washing in silence, until he yelped and Matt straightened, wondering if Techie needed help.

“Ahh, shit,” Techie said tensely, “the shampoo keeps running into these cuts, and it stings.”

Matt could see the outline of him through the glass, face turned up towards the spray, scrubbing soap away from his eyes and forehead. The silhouette turned, rinsing shampoo from his hair. Matt imagined what Techie would look like, stepping out of the shower pink and clean, his long hair a flow of molten copper over his shoulders. He went to the rack over the toilet for a fresh towel.

“You can have the little conditioner,” Matt called out. “I don’t use it.”

“Oh,” Techie said, the shape of him looking for the small bottle provided by the motel. “Thanks. Been a while since I had conditioner to use at all.”

Matt wondered if Techie would ever recover from what he’d endured. He wondered if he’d ever be able to trust anyone again, or if he’d be constantly sleeping with one eye open, wondering what tortures life would have for him next. Could Matt help someone like that? In his heart of hearts, he felt he wanted to. He might not be the best at it— he’d never really had an opportunity to give comfort to another person— but he wanted to help lift Techie up, if he could. If he could avoid being a complete jackass for that long.

The shower knobs squeaked as Techie closed the taps, and Matt held out a towel as he stepped cautiously onto the tile. The cuts looked better, cleaned out.

Techie took the towel and wrapped his hair, walking naked to the mirror and wiping the steam away with his hand. “I just realized there’s all sorts of stuff I’m not gonna have for a bit. Toothbrush, clean underwear, all kinds of things. I dunno, do they give those things out at like, homeless shelters?”

Matt didn’t know either. He got another towel from the rack and didn’t answer, holding it out to Techie to dry his body, and wrap around his waist.

“There’s a little thing of mouthwash here,” Techie said, eyeing the miniature bottle of Scope with its tamper-proof seal still on. “Is this yours?”

Matt shook his head. Even if it had been, he’d have given it freely. “Take it,” he said, watching Techie wring our his hair in the towel and then carefully fold the towel over. He looked at it like he was considering taking the towel, too.

“If you say so,” he mumbled, finally setting the damp towel aside. Carefully, and watching Matt to see if he’d object, Techie picked up Matt’s comb and worked it through his wet hair. Matt stood by and watched Techie perform his ablutions, feeling like a creep. “What time do you want to leave?” Techie asked. Matt looked around. He had just a few things to gather up.

“We could leave as soon as you’re dressed,” he said. It seemed like /escaping under the cover of night/, and was probably the best way to make sure Techie wasn’t chased down.

“Don’t you want to sleep?” Techie asked, turning to regard Matt with concern. “I kinda barged in here and, and everything. Woke you up.”

“I napped earlier in the day. I’m good to drive.” He didn’t know if he’d be able to sleep anyway, his mind whirling with this sudden change to his solitary life. Did Techie really want to just be dropped off at an embassy and then be left alone? Never to see Matt again? Techie pressed his lips together, but didn’t object.

While Techie tried to clean some of the blood out of the collar of his shirt, Matt went around the room, making sure he had everything. Comb, watch, et cetera. Sure, there was a chance still that Techie would rob him blind. But he didn’t want to believe that. Techie came out of the bathroom in his damp shirt and short-shorts, his shoes laced all the way up with the laces wrapped once around the ankles, and caught Matt staring at his long, slim legs.

“Sorry about the, um, my get-up. The overalls I usually wore had the logo of the farm on them and I just. I didn’t want... to look at it. Anymore.”

Matt blinked, trying to clear his head of visions of those legs wrapped around him. “Understandable. You’re gonna need sunscreen. On your legs. So you don’t get burned in the car.” He turned away from techie to dig a half-empty bottle of SPF 50 from his duffel, and tried not to watch Techie sitting on the bed, smoothing the lotion all over. There was clearly something wrong with Matt if he couldn’t get his mind out of the gutter for FIVE FUCKING MINUTES. He wiped his sweaty palms on his sleep pants, forced his attention towards digging for something to wear for the drive.

“L-listen,” Techie began hesitantly, tucking Matt’s sunscreen back into the duffel. “I want to thank you. You. Um. You didn’t have to, I mean you /don’t/, have to do. All this. For me. You don’t know me, or, or owe me anything. I want you to know that I, you know. I get that. And. I dunno. That’s it I guess.”

Matt shrugged. “I told you it’s nothing.” He pulled a cleanish shirt from the top of the bag, changed quickly. When he looked up, Techie’s eyes were on him.

“How long’ve you been out of the military?” he asked, gaze fixed on Matt’s shirt. Matt looked down. It wasn’t one of his Navy shirts, so he didn’t know where the question came from.

“A while,” Matt answered evasively. He didn’t want to think about how long he’d been drifting around, wasting money, but it was long enough for his hair to have grown out some.

“Oh, it’s just. You’re in really good shape, is all.” Matt’s heart thudded, trying not to put too much stock into the way Techie was staring fixedly at his chest. “I mean, um. I just. I n-never seem to put on any muscle, no m-matter what I do, so. I was just wondering.” Techie dragged his gaze to the floor, and it was hard to tell in the hazy pink light, but Matt thought the man might’ve been blushing.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Matt thought, warring with himself. “Uh, thanks,” he said. “If uh, you wanted to build muscle I could give you some work-out tips, but... I think you look pretty good the way you are.” He swallowed. “Not that you asked. Um. Are you ready to go?”

Techie bolted up from the bed, wobbled, put his hand out to the wall to steady himself. “I stood up too fast,” he said, pressing his hand to his face. “Sorry, hold on. ‘M just a little lightheaded.”

Matt wondered when the last time Techie had a good meal was.

“Hey, that Denny’s is 24 hours, right?” Matt asked. “We should get something for the road.”

Techie gave him an uncomfortable look, clearly thinking about how he couldn’t pay for that. Matt chose to ignore it and hefted his bag over his shoulder. Throwing the duffel into the back seat at some hour past 4 felt eerie. The streets were empty, the world was dark, and the night felt strangely close. Techie stuck behind him like a shadow until he had to separate to get into the passenger seat.

“I hope no one sees me going with you,” Techie said, staring out the window into the nothingness.

“If that woman tries to take you back I’ll call the fucking cops,” Matt promised, pulling out of the parking lot, “but if it makes you feel better, I’ll park around the side of the building and you can stay in the car.”

“Alright,” Techie murmured. He still seemed nervous though, turning his RFID device over and over in his hands.

“What are you gonna do with that?” Matt asked, wheeling the large car around to pull around to the back of the Denny’s, away from the road.

“I was thinking I’d take off the part that hooks into the access port on a hotel door, and sell the rest. These things are worth about three hundred dollars. It’s n-not much but that’ll feed me for a while.” He continued to fiddle with it, and Matt wondered if any potential buyer could have any above-board use for the device. Probably not. He supposed that wasn’t 100% his problem, though... and it was better than having Techie use it to skim credit card numbers or something. He put the car in park, and wondered for a strange moment if Techie would be okay out here, alone. Or, if Matt should trust Techie not to steal his stuff and run off to hitch a ride on the freeway. Well, there was hardly anything of value in the duffel anyway. Just all the cash he had to his name. Looking at Techie’s profile in the dark, he decided he’d take his chances.

When he stepped out of the car, he noticed a back door to the building was open, and in the square of light spilling out of it, was the happy waitress, sitting on a plastic pickle tub and scrolling listlessly on her phone. She looked very different from how she appeared on the clock, the blue light from her screen casting shadows around her eyes, strands of hair falling out of her bun.

“Oh. Um. Estrella, right?” Matt asked, as she watched him approach. “Working the night shift, huh?”

She looked up from her phone, clicked the screen off, pocketed it in the front of her apron.

“You leaving town?” she asked, not addressing Matt’s question, since the answer was obvious.

“Yep. Car got fixed, so.” Matt shrugged.

“Good for you,” she said, and Matt couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or not. It seemed like a strange place to end a conversation so he tried for something else.

“Estrella is a pretty name,” he said. He hoped she didn’t think he was trying to hit on her.

“Thanks,” she replied, “but it’s not my real name. It’s actually Rey, but most of the kitchen staff here speaks Spanish, and ‘Rey’ in Spanish means ‘king’. I kept getting comments about that so I picked something else. It means ‘star’.”

“Oh,” Matt said. “Well it was, uh, a good choice.” Shoving his hands in his pockets, he changed tacks. “I’m looking to get on the road pretty uh, pretty soon so. Any recommendations for what I can order that’ll come out fast?”

“Fries. Sodas. Coffee.” She thought a moment. “Soup, but that doesn’t travel well. Chicken strips. Tots. Anything calling out to you?”

“Fries and coffee would do it,” he said, glancing back at his car. There wasn’t much nutrition in that but it could hold them over until they got to Bakersfield.

“Breakfast of champions,” she quipped in response. “That guy with you now?” She inclined her head at Matt’s car, where Techie’s silhouette was visible on the passenger side.

“He’s. Uh.” Matt didn’t know what to tell her. If this girl was friends with that ‘Mama’ woman, or if they got Matt’s plate number from the mechanic, there could be trouble in the future.

“Big secret, huh?” she guessed, expression unchanging. “Forget I asked and I’ll forget I saw you. Good luck to you both.”

He nodded, and made to round the corner of the building, hoping she’d keep her promise. Just as she was nearly out of sight, she called out to him again.

“It’s hard to leave this place,” she said, and Matt turned to look at her again. He’d guessed her age at 18 before but now she looked... so world weary, staring at him with her chin propped up on her fist, looking like a color-tinted Dorothea Lange photo. Was this just what kids looked like now, pinch-shouldered and defiant in turns? Just ten years out of high school he found people younger than him unrecognizable and foreign. “But once you do you’ll never come back.” 

It was ominous, but her phone made a sound in her apron pocket and she turned her attention to that, allowing Matt to finally slip into the nearly-deserted Denny’s. There was a man at the bar who was almost certainly a trucker, gulping down coffee from a thick-rimmed white mug. Beyond that, the place was a ghost town.

He approached the first person he saw in uniform, ordered fries and two coffees to go, and emptied a whole bowl of single-use creamers into his to-go bag. Paid cash. Left the Denny’s for the last time. When he came back around the building, the girl was gone, the door was closed, and the strip of asphalt where he’d parked his car was that much darker for it.

When he opened the car door, he saw that Techie had hunkered down in his seat, so much so he was almost sitting in the foot well.

“I don’t like it,” he said. “Seems s-strange she doesn’t have anyone out here l-looking for me. Maybe she’s thought of something w-worse. She has my nn, my documents. She could steal m-my identity, or report me to the cops f-for my role in aiding you know, mm, c-criminal activities,” Techie fretted.

“If she did, she’d be implicated as well,” Matt argued. He was seriously considering sending an anonymous tip to the Department of State about this woman holding passports, especially seeing Techie’s nervous stutter get worse.

“Part of me thinks I should burn the farm d-down,” Techie said, so seriously that Matt turned to goggle at him. “But there are other people stuck there like me, and I wouldn’t want them to get hurt.”

“Also, that’s arson,” Matt added casually, trying not to sound too alarmed.

Techie looked at him and smiled gently, as if he hadn’t just suggested burning someone alive. “That too,” he conceded, holding Matt’s gaze for a moment too long before returning his attention to the darkness gathered about them. It was nearly 5AM, and soon it would be dawn.

Matt pulled out onto the I-5 in the cool blue hour before sunrise. There was a strangely nostalgic feeling to the waning darkness, like living inside of an expired Polaroid. He always seemed to be looking in his peripheral vision for hoodoos, in these pre-dawn moments, an unexpected remnant of a memory of visiting Bryce Canyon as a child and being awakened by his parents before the moon had set, to hike by flashlight to a good vantage point. They’d watched the sun come up over the rock towers, light gilding the crown of each pinnacle until it looked as though he was staring into a valley of gods.

The Central Valley was nothing like that.

It was flat and empty and portioned out into vast farms, and when the sun finally crested the eastern horizon as Matt passed the peach orchard, it was not to limn columns of sedimentary rock carved by the ages, but to shine on the corners of a blockade.

Two front-loader tractors, side by side, blocked the two southbound lanes of the freeway. Matt looked around. A Mustang roared up the road in the opposite direction, speeding at 110 miles per hour towards NorCal, but there was no one approaching behind the 1972 Chrysler New Yorker. Techie slid farther down in his seat, breathing hard and shining with sweat. Out of one of the tractors, a figure dropped, nimble as a cat, to the street. Even in the dim rose glow of first light, Matt recognized her immediately.

“Well, good /mornin’/,” she drawled, poisonous and sharp as she stalked towards Matt’s car. “You sure are leaving in a hurry. I wonder /why/.” She didn’t smile her fake smile this time, though she did reach into the pocket where Matt knew she kept a knife. Matt calculated. His car was too large and unwieldy to get around the tractors quickly, and Matt would wager what little he had that Mama was backed up by lackeys with guns, stationed on the higher vantage point offered by the vehicles. How would Matt do hand-to-hand with these folks? True, his military career had been largely technical, but he still had combat training. He opened his car door and stepped out, despite Techie’s pleading.

“I’m not going to play games with you, Miss,” he said, closing the door to give Techie just that little bit more armor. He refused to call the woman ‘Mama’, and refused to argue his case with her. “Let us pass.”

“You’re stealing from me!” she spat. With no further explanation, she darted around the other side of the car and attempted to wrench the passenger side door open, but Techie had locked it. She drew back her hand to break the window, but Techie suddenly flung the door open, kicking it out with both of his legs to crash into her, hard. She wheeled to the side, coughing, stumbling, and Matt moved quickly between her and Techie, closing the car door again. When Mama regained her balance, Matt could see that the heavy steel frame had slashed her across her forehead, and her lips, too, were bloodied. She blinked, dazed, and pulled her knife. A gunshot rang out, but it was just a warning shot. Mama stood between the shooter and the target, and both of them were moving too fast to get a bead on, but still the sound triggered something in Matt. He rushed the smaller woman, heedless of the knife in her hand, knocked into her hard with his shoulder like a linebacker. She coughed again, and he could feel the warm, viscous blood soaking into his shirt. He pinned her to the grille of a tractor, forced her wrist up over her head, dug his nails in and ground her wrist bones together until she dropped the knife. It clattered loudly on the asphalt in the still of the morning.

His glasses had slipped down his nose but he stared her down anyway. “I said,” he grit out, “Let us /pass/. You’re a thief and a liar and you’re gonna pay one way or another. But do you want it to be right here and now?” He drew her wrist back and slammed it against the metal again. It would be so easy to break her wrist. He might, just so she couldn’t carve anyone else up like she had Techie. Or, just because it felt good to make someone else hurt.

“What the fuck are you pissants doing?!” she screamed, chin up towards the people gathered in and on the tractors. “Shoot his brains out!”

Matt threw her. He lifted her by the throat and the arm and threw her across the road like she weighed nothing, then he grabbed her knife from where it was abandoned near his right foot. A shot hit the pavement and scattered gravel shrapnel, skimming him as he ducked to the side of a tractor, and then around the back. He tried to get a figure on how much backup Mama had brought along with her. By his count there were four. Another bullet pinged off of the tractor’s bucket, but no response came from Mama, even as one of the men was climbing out of the tall cabin nearest Matt, shouting.

Blood rushed in Matt’s ears, so if the man was speaking English, Matt didn’t understand it. Matt swung around from the back of the tractor to pull the man off the ladder onto the ground, to stomp on his hand until he let go of his gun. He kicked it behind himself, where it would be easier for him to get it later. If he wanted, that is, needed to. He climbed up into the tractor cab.

There was another man perched on the hood of the tractor, who seemed to be battling indecision over whether or not to shoot through the window of his boss’s own machine. So, these guys weren’t professionals, Matt thought. At least, this one wasn’t. He had his gun pointed at Matt, but he was holding it wrong, like he’d seen it only in movies. Matt looked down at the controls of the tractor and saw that the important stuff was all helpfully labeled with laminated stickers. He moved a joystick and the bucket of the front loader started shifting back, its metal arms beginning to shear together. The man on the hood had to scramble off, or else be crushed by the tractor’s load-bearing parts. Matt pulled another toggle, and the tractor began rolling backwards. The man who’d initially been driving the tractor was struggling with the door, though he couldn’t seem to get it open. Matt wouldn’t be surprised if he’d broken some of the man’s fingers, stomping on them. He wobbled the wheel, causing the tractor to jolt back and forth, shaking the man off.

All the same, the men from the other tractor had begun climbing up Matt’s. He pressed his foot down on the gas and the tractor jolted backward, raising a shout from the climbing men. Once he’d cleared the other tractor however, he yanked the steering wheel around, one way then another, causing the tractor to snake all over the road. One man fell off, staggered away from the tractor’s wheels, but the other had an iron grip, and began working to get the door open. Matt licked his lips, tasted blood, and hoped it was his own— he’d hate it if he had that foul woman’s blood on his tongue.

He tried turning the tractor hard lee, but it seemed to wobble on its axles, overbalanced by its bucket. The door creaked open and hung on its hinges, and the last man, the last brass-balled motherfucker Matt hadn’t dealt with once yet, clawed himself halfway into the cab. He was still hanging with his lower half dangling out the open door when Matt turned sharp the other way. They’d left the altercation in the dust far ahead of them and Matt switched the gears, lurching forward toward the other three men, that sickening woman, and Techie. The man in the cab with him was scrabbling at the seat, too busy trying to keep the door from closing on his legs with every wild, wrenching turn to get his feet under him and climb up into the cab properly. He couldn’t grip his gun well enough to aim, like that, but Matt couldn’t fight it off of him without letting go of the wheel. He wasn’t about to do that. He could crash into the other tractor, roll over his own car, tip the tractor over with him inside of it so however many tons of metal dropped heavily on top of him. He could mother fucking run somebody over. Would that be the only way to stop them from shooting him dead? The guy clinging on to the seat beside him for dear life and hollering his head off was not giving up. He looked determined to claw Matt’s face off with his bare hands, if he couldn’t put a bullet in him, sweating profusely, baring his teeth at Matt to show the places where they were blackened and dead, hissing out choppy breaths. Matt had to assume the man was a meth addict, couldn’t remember if meth was one of those drugs that was supposed to make people unnaturally strong because they no longer cared about their own wellbeing or self-preservation. He’d just have to work with ‘yes’, just in case.

He was coming up on the group pointing guns at him, waiting for a clean shot, when another figure stumbled into view from behind the other tractor. Mama was awake, and pissed off. She smacked one of the men across the face and snatched his gun, taking a wide stance and aiming right at Matt. Her hands were steady, despite how wobbly she’d been, getting to her feet, despite how much she’d been knocked around, and Matt was sure she’d take the shot as soon as she had it. Matt made a quick decision and threw the toggle that brought the bucket of the front loader back down, then twisted the wheel hard to the right, and was momentarily blinded by the sun rising over the peach trees as the bucket, followed by the rest of the vehicle, slammed into the other tractor at speed. The sound of torn metal erupted around them as he drove his tractor into the other, pushing it off the road. The man clinging to the seat was gone, probably having dropped on impact, but Matt didn’t want to think about that.

 

Suddenly he heard a familiar rumble. His old junker of a car came roaring past, through the gap Matt had created by crashing one tractor into another. Mama and the others had gone running to avoid it, and Techie screamed from the driver’s side,

“COME ON, MOVE YOUR ARSE!”

Matt jolted out of the smoking wreckage. His arms and shoulders twinged with pain, but he ignored it for as long as it took for him to catch up to Techie who had slowed, but hadn’t stopped. There were gunshots behind them but as soon as Matt was in the passenger seat Techie floored it, skidding across the highway as fast as the old Chrysler would go.

“Fuck, fuck,” Techie kept saying, huffing out his words between deep gulps of air. “If they follow us, the 5 is basically a straight shot, we’d be fish in a barrel.”

“Follow us with what?” Matt said, though he was looking over his shoulder at the shrinking picture of the wrecked tractors. “I didn’t see any other trucks.”

“She’ll be really m-mmmad, now, I don’t know what she’ll d-do. She’s crazy as a b-bag of rats, Matt, I don’t know what she’ll come up with.” He was staring ahead down the road, hardly blinking, his hands gripping the wheel in a white-knuckled grip.

“We’ll get you safe first, then, I dunno, report her to the feds,” Matt said. He wondered if Techie would want him to take over driving at some point. He doubted Techie had a valid license.

“‘The feds,’” Techie parroted quietly. “She could probably prove I helped build technology specifically for the p-purpose of theft. And. Helped cook meth. Even if she gets put away for what she did to me, and, and everyone else on that f-farm, who knows what your /feds/ would do to me, an immigrant way, way past the expiration of his visa who knowingly assisted in a crime.” His accent was fluctuating, and it was strange to Matt’s ear, made him concentrate hard to understand what Techie was saying.

“Then what do you wanna do about her?” Matt asked, outraged at the thought that she could just get away with this. “Let her keep taking advantage of people?”

Techie was quiet for a long time. Matt watched his profile in the growing light, the golden sunrise making his eyelashes shine. “I don’t know. I was just... p-planning to see what I could do about, uh, getting my old passport deemed ‘invalid’ so she can’t use it against m-me, and then, um, getting a new one. M-maybe going back to Europe. Dunno what things are gonna be like there, after last year’s Brexit vote, but at least I’d know where I stood with my, you know, my citizenship status.”

“Don’t you think they’re gonna ask what happened to your old passport, why you’re here after your visa’s expired, when you go to the embassy?” Matt gripped the arm rest. He was antsy, adrenaline still burning in his system. His foot nudged the Denny’s bag, sitting forgotten in the passenger footwell, and he grabbed it to stuff a few fries in his mouth, trying to keep his mind off of the frustration and nervous energy boiling under his skin.

“Maybe,” Techie said. “I’ll b-burn that bridge when I get there.” He swiped at the old sweat on his forehead, winced when his hand scraped over the fresh scabs there. “Hope this doesn’t scar,” he murmured, almost to himself. “I’d have to cut my hair to cover it. Be a grown man with a fringe. Humiliating.”

Matt wanted to laugh but couldn’t. Too much had happened, and it was barely past dawn. He wondered how long he could keep going on this energy, and reached for one of the styrofoam coffee cups, scrounging a few creamers from the bag to cool it down. He didn’t like that they were just leaving unfinished business behind them, but what could they do? Some kind of big heroic act? They were outnumbered and outgunned. Maybe he just had to accept that. It was a bitter pill to swallow, and he washed it down with mediocre coffee.

After an hour or so, Techie agreed to switch and let Matt drive, if only so he could eat some of the now cold french fries.

“I don’t mind cold chips,” he said, digging out a ketchup packet and squirting a bit on each individual fry as he ate. “You ever have a chip butty?”

Matt shook his head and pushed his glasses up his nose. Techie’s accent came out more when he called french fries ‘chips’, and it was a little sweet.

“It’s a chip sandwich. Chips on bread, with tomato sauce or mayonnaise or brown sauce. Some people like it with vinegar, you know, like you’d get with a fish and chips plate, but I don’t like my chips soggy.” He talked with his mouth full and ate over the bag, in that sort of furtive way that people had when they’d grown accustomed to having food stolen or withheld.

Matt frowned. “And that’s considered a meal? I thought beans on toast was bad. What are you all doing to food over there?” It was supposed to be a joke, but Techie looked at him with a sort of sad resignation.

“I’ll take what I can get,” he said, licking salt and grease from his fingertips. “You know, when I was a kid, my father liked to remind me that the population of Ireland has still not recovered to pre-Famine levels, even after a hundred and fifty years. That the Famine permanently affected our economy and our culture and our place in the world.” He bit into three fries at once, chewed quickly. “He’d tell me that, when we were living on tinned meat and veg because we c-couldn’t afford anything else. I don’t think his inability to keep a job had anything to do with the Famine, really, m-more to do with his temperament. He worked one job for a really l-long time, and then the factory closed down and he, um, he didn’t feel like he should have to learn a new trade after all those years of service. And he wasn’t willing to take entry-level jobs anywhere else, you know, because it was, mm, beneath him. Still, I guess it’s a little ironic. It’s been a hundred and s-seventy-five years since the Famine and still I, you know, I emigrated from Ireland, just as my countrymen d-did in the 1800s, and just like them I got stuck doing dangerous work here in America for little to no p-pay. Nothing really changes, does it?” His fingers rustled in the bag, seeking out the last fries. More farmland passed the windows, and Matt, strangely, was reminded of having to read The Grapes of Wrath in high school. “I guess my danger of dying by dynamite was significantly less than railroad workers in the 1850s,” Techie conceded. “And I guess, you know, Americans don’t have the same attitudes about the Irish that you used to.“ He left the implication about other immigrant groups unsaid, but Matt still felt it, hanging between them.

“You know, I’m a little Irish, myself, on my mom’s side,” he said, trying to change the subject.

Techie pulled a face. “Lots of Americans say that. Especially in M-March.” He crumpled up the empty bag and placed it at his feet. “Sorry, he amended. I’m not, you know, I’m not trying to be ungrateful, or, um, deny you your heritage. It’s just. Um. Well, thanks for the chips.”

Matt didn’t have anything to say to that. Other cars and trucks were coming up ahead and behind him, and he concentrated on keeping pace for a while, watching his temperature gauge. It seemed fine so far, but the car would probably need a lot more work in the future.

“Do you wanna try and find something on the radio?” Matt asked, after they’d been silent a long while, miles and miles stretching out between them as the morning progressed.

“Nah,” Techie answered, staring out the window, watching cars and the flat scrubland passing them by.

“We’ll be coming up on the exit for Bakersfield soon,” Matt said. Techie was tilted away from him, shoulders slumped.

“Is that where you’re going?” he responded, glancing at Matt once, then twice, in quick succession.

“Well,” Matt answered, “I don’t know where I’m going. But I thought. We at least ought to get you some neosporin and alcohol, for those cuts.” They looked less puffy now that they’d closed up after the shower, but they’d probably need looking after. “Also, you could see if there’s an embassy there.”

“Seems awful c-close to where we came from,” Techie said, and Matt could hear the edge in his voice. His stutter got worse when he was stressed, it seemed.

“Well, we could go a bit further,” Matt suggested. “It’s a couple more hours to L.A.”

Techie looked at him with guarded hope.

Matt didn’t pull off to the exit.


	3. Chapter 3

“It’s a shame Big Sur is closed, since those land slides,” Matt said. “Guys I knew in the Service told me its beautiful over there.”

“We’re way south of there, aren’t we?” Techie asked, furrowing his brow.

“Yeah. I was just thinking of finding our way over to Highway 1. Take the scenic route. You’d never think you’d miss the ocean after spending a few years on an aircraft carrier.”

“Mm. Could do. Um. Do you want to know what I’ve been thinking about this whole time? I’m honestly shocked nobody shot your car.”

Matt hadn’t even thought of that. “Holy shit you’re right. They could’ve shot out my tires or windows or something.”

“This car is the size of a boat. I mean, you’d think they’d have hit it at least once, just for probability’s sake.”

“Were they all high?” Matt wondered aloud. That’d be a stupid way to prepare for a shootout.

“Dunno. Or m-maybe they hate that woman as much as I do, and didn’t really wanna do shit for her.”

Matt considered that. “Could be.” It wouldn’t surprise him.

“I um, I didn’t ask before if you’re alright. I mean you just walked away from a tractor crash. And guys were shooting at you. I s-should’ve asked if you’re okay, before asking you to drive me f-further south.” He was pulling at the hem of his shirt. There was a loose thread and Matt wondered if Techie would unravel the whole thing before this trip was over.

“My shoulders hurt a bit. Maybe a bit of whiplash. But, nothing serious. I’d be concerned if it hurt to turn my head, but. So far it’s alright.” He rolled his shoulders as much as he could while driving, felt the soreness there.

“I guess, since you were in the m-military, you might be used to being shot at?” Techie tried, forcing a smile.

“Not really, to be honest. I was an electronics technician, remember? Not a front-lines soldier.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. It’s really all my f-fault that it happened to you. If I hadn’t f-forced you to t-take me with you, you could’ve left, no problem, and, and... do you have tinnitus or anything?”

Matt wanted to take Techie’s hands in his, tell him it was fine— even if it wasn’t fine, and he might remember this in his nightmares in the future. In any case, he couldn’t let go of the wheel to do that with traffic moving at 85 miles an hour.

“I’m used to loud noises at least. You ever hear a F/A-18 take off?”

“No,” Techie replied, clearly not soothed by this. “I still feel bad though, all the same. Maybe I could, mm, rub your shoulders later? Um, for your whiplash.” He turned his face away from Matt, staring out the window again.

“You... don’t have to do that,” Matt said, glancing over at him. God, those long bare thighs of his in those little shorts were a vision. Matt forced his eyes back to the road.

“Umm,” Techie murmured, casting careful looks at Matt over his shoulder, “but mm, what if I want to?”

Matt swallowed thickly. He could feel the sweat between his palms and the wheel.

“I still won’t let you, if you’re only doing it because you think you owe me.” He thought back to the way Techie had offered his body as payment, back in the motel room. That was just a few hours ago but it felt like worlds away.

“I mean, that might not be the um, the /only/ reason...” Techie admitted. “You look like you have. Very nice shoulders. Um. You can see why Mama wanted to carve ‘faggot’ on my forehead.” His fingers gripped the cut-off bottoms of his shorts. It was as if he always needed something to hold on to, something to tether him to this world. “If you’re not interested that’s. I mean. Understandable. I just thought. Um, m-maybe I was misreading things. But. I dunno. If you wanted to. Just for... for fun...?”

“Jesus, Techie. Holy shit.” Matt shifted in his seat a bit. “Yeah, I mean. God I can’t think about that and drive at the same time.”

“Is that a yes?” Techie asked, a hesitant smile taking his features over by slow increments.

Matt sighed, and tried not to get distracted by thoughts of Techie’s thighs parting for him, his back bowing, his small ass up in the air. Unless, maybe he liked to top? That would be fine too. Matt would hold his own knees to his chest for Techie to slide into him if he wanted. Hell, they could do both. Whatever it was, Matt wanted it. Although...

“I dunno if you really wanna, like, do that, with me,” Matt warned. “I’ve been told I can get a bit. Rough.” This was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth. The whole truth was that Matt liked it rough. He liked bruising and bleeding, giving and receiving. He didn’t want to take it too far with Techie, who had already been through so much, but he wasn’t the best when it came to impulse control once he’d gotten his blood up. Maybe it would be better if he didn’t create a situation where Techie could get hurt. 

“Mm, I don’t mind that. I like rough,” Techie insisted. “Um, I mean, I probably shouldn’t take any slaps to the face for a little while, until this heals a bit more.” Techie touched his forehead gingerly, and Matt’s stomach turned over— he remembered how Techie had looked with blood running sluggish down his face and hated himself for what it did to him. He didn’t know how his wires had gotten crossed like that, but it wasn’t like he didn’t have a history of anger, of violence. He didn’t want to get that mixed up with sex, was afraid he’d become another statistic of post-military domestic abusers. Matt’s face pinched, but Techie didn’t let him ready another excuse. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said, sitting up in his seat. “You’re thinking I’m too fragile to handle whatever you can dish out. You’re thinking that /not/ fucking me, even if you want to, is protecting me somehow. I know how consent works. Just because I’ve been in a... a bad situation doesn’t mean I’m not able to make my own choices. I’m not a child.” He flung himself back against the seat, slumping down again with his arms crossed. Matt didn’t say anything for a moment. Techie probably felt like Matt was handling him with kid gloves, and Matt realized, that was part of the reason he hadn’t gone home to Utah. He knew his family would avoid talking about the truth of his discharge from the military. They never talked about anything of consequence, always preferring to avoid any uncomfortable subjects, especially his mother. She’d been that way when he’d gotten into fights as a kid, and when the school guidance counselor expressed concerns about his short fuse and violent outbursts. Perhaps naively, he’d thought the military might’ve regulated that out of him. Instead, it might’ve made it worse. And, he’d probably been doing to Techie the exact same thing his mother would have done: changing the subject to something pleasant.

“I should be honest with you,” he sighed. “I told you I got kicked out of the Navy for getting into a fistfight with my CO. That wasn’t an isolated incident. I’ve been in lots of fights. I’ve punched holes in walls and broken things that weren’t mine. Honestly it’s a miracle I was never arrested.” A hole in the traffic opened up and he sped around a truck full of pigs, using the fear of having this conversation to navigate at speed. “What I’m afraid of is, uh, I don’t... I don’t really know why rough stuff turns me on. It’s kinda fucked up. Actually, it’s really fucked up. Like, goddamn, why does seeing you bloodied and sobbing make me want to fuck you? What is wrong with me?” He wanted to slam his fist against the steering wheel but restrained himself. He felt the stored tension in his body, and had no way to let it out.

“You think you’re gonna totally lose it and take it from ‘rough sex’ into ‘sexual assault’?” Techie translated. “Have you ever done that before?”

“Um. It’s maybe taken me longer than it should have to stop when a partner told me to. I apologized but. That doesn’t change what I did.” Matt didn’t want to know what kind of face Techie was making at that revelation.

“Maybe you need a collar,” Techie mumbled. “You know, so like, if you get, umm, over-enthusiastic, someone could p-pull on your, um, leash.”

Matt looked over, then. Techie was blushing fairly brightly, and Matt swallowed. He was going to rear-end a semi truck if he couldn’t keep it together.

“You’d like that?” he asked, and he heard Techie squirm in his seat. “You’d like making sure I, um. Followed directions and. Behaved right?”

“M-maybe?” Techie answered. Matt could hear Techie’s thighs sticking to the seat as he shifted.

“Hhuh,” Matt groaned. “I like the thought of that. Let me know when you start seeing signs for Santa Barbara. It’s a few more hours of driving, but if I’m gonna fuck you I don’t want it to be in another truck stop town, like the one we just left. Let’s go somewhere. Let’s forget everything that’s happened today or yesterday or in the last three years, and just. Look at the ocean.” Techie nodded. Matt didn’t know if it was the right thing to do. Maybe you were supposed to sleep after a difficult, maybe even traumatic experience. That wasn’t really covered in any of his past training. But, beaches were supposed to be relaxing. He started looking for signs.

They turned off at Castaic Junction and followed the Santa Clarita River along Route 126 until they hit Ventura. From there, they had to head north again, which made them both a little nervous, despite the fact that they were more than a hundred miles from where they’d started, as the crow flies. The entire time on Route 101, Techie stared across Matt at the ocean. It was sparkling blue, and lined with palm trees.

“Good god, it looks like a post card,” Techie said. Stupidly, Matt imagined Techie in a bikini. Ridiculous. He didn’t know why that was the first image to pop into his mind. “I’d better put on some more sun screen pretty soon. Us redheads are not well known for our resilience in direct sunlight.” He was rubbing up and down his long legs, as if that would keep the sun off of them.

“Did I tell you by the way that I think your little shorts are really hot? I mean like, the pockets are hanging out of them they’re so short. I know I shouldn’t make a big deal since I mean, I already saw you naked, but. Those shorts are driving me crazy.”

That wasn’t really what he’d intended to say, but it made Techie blush so he figured it was fine.

“Well, it’s a good thing I suppose,” Techie replied, “because they’re the only clothes I’ve got for a while.”

“We could hit up a Goodwill,” Matt offered.

“I’ll do that after I find an electronics shop with ‘BUY-SELL’ in the window.” 

Matt nodded. That was better than selling an RFID scanner to someone on the street. Now that he thought about it, Matt realized it wouldn’t make any sense for Techie to try to sell a single piece of tech like a counterfeit watch salesman. He felt silly for having thought of it that way.

It was only mid-morning when they crossed into Santa Barbara and the highway curved away from the water to pass through the city.

“Hey look, a zoo,” Techie said, pointing out the window. “Lucky bastards, /their/ cages get an ocean view.”

Matt made a noncommittal sound. He didn’t know where he wanted to exit. He chose an exit more or less at random and traveled west for a few blocks until they were looking at the ocean again. Passing the ‘big name’ hotels by, he pulled in at a quaint-looking inn with a cast bronze statue of jumping dolphins in the front lawn. He hoped it cost less than the Hilton would, rather than marketing itself as a ‘boutique’ hotel and charging extra for that moniker.

He asked Techie to stay with the car, and went in to ask. On its face, this was to prevent the theft of Matt’s things, but really, it was so Techie wouldn’t feel bad about the price, whatever it was. He was only paying for a night anyway.

When he came back out again with a pair of room keys (actual keys, Matt was glad, having learned from Techie about the exploitability of key cards), Techie was standing beside the car, stretching his legs. Matt wished he had a camera. The sight of Techie against a backdrop of the ocean, red hair against blue sky, his yellow shirt stirred by the ocean breeze, his back pressed to Matt’s boxy old car in his short shorts and ratty Converse, was something Matt wanted to remember forever.

“Are we going to go to the beach?” Techie asked, cutting his eyes through the morning sun at the distant shore.

“We could,” Matt said. He wasn’t really paying attention to anything besides Techie’s delicate ankles, so thin and pale. Techie looked down as well.

“I suppose these aren’t appropriate beach shoes. The canvas holds dirt like crazy, and dust gets in the grommets, puts little circles on my socks. For something I bought in a charity shop in London they’ve held up pretty well, though.” He wiggled his feet, and it was adorable. So much so, Matt fully forgot what had or hadn’t passed between them, and lifted a hand to cup Techie’s jaw. “Oh,” Techie sighed, tilting his chin up.

“Yeah,” Matt answered, and pressed his lips to Techie’s.

Techie leaned into him, practically draped himself over Matt’s shoulders. 

“Is this okay?” Techie murmured against Matt’s lips. “Should we be doing this now, today, after everything?” He kissed the corner of Matt’s mouth, the edge of his jaw, the tender spot under his ear.

“I feel like I should be asking /you/ that,” Matt answered, petting down Techie’s back.

“I dunno,” Techie slurred into Matt’s neck, “but I want to.”

“Why do you suppose that is?”

Matt realigned their lips then, so Techie didn’t answer for a while. When they separated again, listening to seagulls passing overhead, Techie gave him a hopeful smile.

“You’re very handsome,” he said. “And um. You were pretty hot, being all action hero this morning.”

“You were the getaway driver.”

“Yeah,” Techie agreed, curling his fingers into the hair at Matt’s nape. “I’ve never kissed anyone out in the open like this before.”

“No?” Matt’s glasses slid down his nose and he pushed them up into his hair to avoid the hassle. He only needed to see directly in front of his face so long as Techie stayed where he was.

“Nah. Um. Before I came to the states, I lived with my father. He uh, was fairly vocally opposed to homosexuality, not necessarily in general c-concept, but. In his house. And I lived in a pretty rural area— the community was small enough that if I’d been caught snogging some bloke my father would’ve f-found out. Ireland as a whole is fairly liberal now, but I was six when homosexual sex acts were decriminalized, so I guess...” He shrugged, didn’t finish his thought. Looking up at Matt again, he licked his lips. “Didn’t stop me from doing it behind closed doors though.”

Matt jingled the keys for their rented room.

“Well I just got us some doors we can close, if you want to,” Matt joked. Techie gave him a look like he was trying not to smile.

“I suppose the beach will still be there later,” he said, urging Matt to grab his duffel and lock up before taking Matt’s hand in his and starting to walk towards the courtyard at the inn’s center. There was a kidney-shaped pool surrounded by Adirondack chairs, and a hot tub under a cloth gazebo.

“Dunno what they need a pool for if the ocean is right there,” Matt commented. Techie didn’t answer, just looked at the number on the inn’s keychain, which was also shaped like a dolphin. The room was on the ground floor and Techie pushed the door open, gazing around with an impressed look. Matt resettled his glasses to look as well.

The decor was tasteful, far better than the pink walls at the motel back at the truck stop. After a moment of stunned silence, Techie took a flying leap at the bed, spilling the decorative pillows off the sides.

“I hope this place wasn’t too expensive,” he said. “Private patio? That’s crazy! Mm, these pillows feel great.” He buried his face in one while Matt set his things down in a low armchair.

“Cost less than I expected,” he said. “What do you think, should we pull the shades down, for decency’s sake?” He caught himself, realizing maybe he was being presumptuous. Pushy, even. Maybe they should just go to the beach. If Matt could stop thinking with his dick for /five fucking minutes/—

“I think you should have a bath with me,” Techie answered, already rolling out of bed and pulling his shirt off, dropping it carelessly on the floor. He kicked his shoes under the bed and traipsed into the bathroom admiring its modern fixtures. Matt came up behind him. The tub was perhaps a little small for two tall men, and Matt wasn’t really in the habit of taking baths anyway, but when Techie bent over in those shorts, fiddling with the taps, he forgot all about that.

While the tub filled, Techie stood and leaned against the wall, in the small space not taken up by a large framed photograph of a derelict tugboat, in high contrast black and white. Between that and the small glass partition near the shower head, Techie was bracketed on both sides, a spot of color against the soft grey of the wall, alive and vital among the geometric angles of the modern fixtures.

“So,” he said, lifting his chin to give Matt a brave face, “tell me about this ‘rough stuff’ you like.”

“Uh,” Matt replied intelligently, “how do you mean?” Techie crossed his legs at the ankle. Matt wanted to kneel on the tiles and lick over the fly of his little shorts until Techie was hard under his tongue.

“Do you like spanking the people you fuck? Choking them? Spitting on them and calling them names?” He stretched his arms up over his head, showing the long, lean lines of his torso. He was so pale, Matt could only think about how brightly bruises would stand out on his hips and thighs. Bites on his neck and shoulders. Dark hickeys around his pale pink nipples. “Or is it more like, you want to tie a guy up and make him cry? Or. Ummm. I don’t think I could deal with mm, you know, knife stuff for a little b-bit. That m-might be too much.”

Matt swallowed thickly. “That’s fine. I... do like all that stuff though.” He could feel arousal twisting in his gut, was probably blushing already just hearing Techie talk about all those possibilities, thinking of his thin limbs contorted in ecstatic pleasure-pain.

Techie hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his shorts, showing off the line of his pubic hair. “Me too,” he said. “I like clawing down a guy’s back to make him fuck me harder. I like pulling hair and swallowing cock until I almost can’t breathe. That sort of thing. I don’t like being called stuff like ‘a bad boy’ or whatever, though. You can call me a freaky bitch but not a /bad little boy/.” He licked his lips, ran his eyes down Matt’s body and back up again. “Do you wanna, umm, strip for me?”

Matt grabbed at the hem of his shirt, struggled it over his head. His glasses got caught in the collar and he had to scramble to keep them from dropping to the ground. The overall effect was probably not very seductive but Techie’s eyes widened all the same.

“Good Christ, look at you,” he mumbled, fingers gripping into the worn denim at his hips, “I just want to eat you up. You’re like a big white chocolate candy bar.” He reached out, pressed his index finger tip against one of the scattered moles dotting Matt’s chest. “Cookies and cream. /Fuck me/, I can’t wait to get my mouth on you.” Techie wiped his sweaty palms on his shorts, seemed to dance from foot to foot in anxious anticipation.

“You should talk,” Matt retorted. “I wanted to lick the blood from your jaw when you broke into my motel room this morning. I’ve wanted to eat your ass out this whole time we’ve been standing here talking because when you bent over to turn on the water those /fucking shorts/ were clinging to you so tight, and your ass was just about hanging out of the bottom. I wanna lick your hole until it’s so soft and ready I could slide a finger right in... I mean. You like being fingered, right? And eaten out?” He’d unbuttoned his jeans and kicked off his shoes but paused before pushing his pants off, waiting to see Techie’s reaction.

“Is that even a question? Yeah, I like it a lot. Take your jeans off. The bath is almost full.”

Matt obeyed, thinking what an odd person Techie was. Of course, they hadn’t known each other very long, but Techie could go from shivering and stuttering one minute to ordering a near complete stranger to strip the next. Matt couldn’t seem to get a solid read on him. But, it had only been a day, really. Naked before Techie, he tried not to fidget, tried not to feel the weight of Techie’s silent stare on him.

“I know I said this before but /Christ/,” Techie mumbled after a too-long stretch of quiet. “If your chest and shoulders and abs and that gorgeous nose and those delicious lips weren’t enough, then fuck, your thighs and your fucking /cock/ would sell the package, honestly. Goddammit, it isn’t even hard yet and I’m salivating.” He dropped his shorts, kicked them and his underwear into a corner. Immediately he gave his soft cock a squeeze, staring at Matt’s lower body with a strange intensity.

“You think my /nose/ is ‘gorgeous’? No one has ever said anything nice about that,” Matt admitted, testing the temperature of the bathwater, stopping to close the taps.

“Fuck, you have no idea,” Techie confirmed, stepping into the tub carefully. “I’m so ready for this bath. It’s actually been years since I actually got a soak like this. But yeah,” he sank slowly into the water, “your nose. I like guys with bigger noses. Um, n-no offense. I just. You were talking about eating me out earlier and um, I like thinking abut your nose pressed to my crack, rubbing me while your, um, your tongue pushes in, and uh...” he swirled his hands in the water, stretched his legs out as much as he could. “If you get in, are we gonna slop water all over the floor?”

“Maybe,” Matt said, climbing in opposite Techie, “but I don’t care, as long as you keep talking about all the filthy things you want me to do to you.”

Techie laughed, and it lit up his face. Some water did splash over the edge of the tub as Matt struggled to fit his long legs alongside Techie’s, but they managed, eventually. It was cramped, and Matt had to wonder if this was too childish, if Techie really enjoyed this physical closeness even though... well, their relationship to one another wasn’t really solidified yet. He tried to be content to sit there and let the steam rise. The ends of Techie’s hair floated in the water as he hunched forward, soaking his arms. When he lifted his hands out of the water, he inspected his wrists.

“It just keeps hitting me, that everything that happened was /today/. Like these abrasions on my wrists—“ Matt looked. They were faint, especially with Techie’s skin turning pink with the heat of the water, “—this happened in the last 24 hours. Today feels like a lifetime.”

It did. Matt didn’t have anything else to say to that, so he just reached for one of Techie’s hands, brought his chafed wrist to his mouth, kissed gently at the scrapes and bruises. Surprisingly, Techie moaned.

“Lick me. Right there, at my pulse point,” Techie commanded, and Matt did, licking the water from his skin. The contrast made the water taste sweet, and Matt licked and kissed at the spot until Techie started to tremble. “It’s like, oversensitive, because of the, you know, the scrapes. Kinda hurts but I also kinda like that, so...”

Matt swallowed, felt a jolt of heat in his belly at the mention of enjoying pain. He tried to get ahold of himself. “Tell me what else you like,” Matt mumbled into Techie’s skin. “Do you like to top, too? Do you like having all that long, gorgeous hair pulled?”

Techie shook, and Matt could feel it where they were pressed together. “Actually, my hair was shorter when I moved here. It grows fast and so, mm, I dunno. No one’s ever pulled it since it grew out—“ He ducked his head. “Not in a, you know, a sexy way, anyway.”

Matt frowned. He didn’t want to trigger any bad memories while they were together but maybe he couldn’t help it. Techie sighed, leaned forward until Matt couldn’t kiss his arm anymore, tucked his head under Matt’s chin and pressed his cheek to Matt’s sternum. Matt wrapped his arms around Techie’s thin frame, chuckled a bit as Techie’s knees squeaked across the bottom of the tub as he rearranged himself.

“Are you comfortable like that?” Matt asked. Techie had curled his considerable height into a fetal position in Matt’s lap. If he kept squirming like that, he was going to get Matt hard, and then they’d have to make a decision.

“Yeah,” Techie sighed. He kissed softly at the center of Matt’s chest, wet fingers stuttering across Matt’s shoulder. “You’re so big. You’re probably about as broad as the cot I had back on the farm. I could stretch out and sleep right on top of you.” His nails scraped lightly from Matt’s collarbone down to his ribs, barely missing his nipple and making Matt’s breath catch. “I could grind against you in my sleep,” Techie mumbled. “Come all over your abs.” His hand dipped further into the water to pet over Matt’s stomach. “All these nice planes and valleys. I could even fuck the line between your pecs, right here.” He laid a kiss over Matt’s sternum, smiled into his skin. “Or I could frot against your cock until you were so desperate you’d have to grab me by the hips, thrust your cock into the crease of my arse, rub off like that.”

Matt swallowed again. He was half hard just from the lurid images Techie was painting, and he was sure Techie could feel it. Techie’s hand slid lower, cupped him delicately.

“You like the thought of that?” Techie went on, beginning to stroke his hand over Matt’s quickly rising cock, “being so hard you’d just... take over?” He leaned up so he could lick water and fresh sweat from Matt’s neck. “I could act like you were forcing me, if you wanted,” he whispered. Matt couldn’t see his face, couldn’t tell if he was smirking or not, but he gave Matt’s cock a squeeze as it jumped in his hand. “I could,” he repeated. Matt was panting.

“Like how?” Matt asked, voice a low croak, “Would you let me hold you down, and then beg to be let go? Or would you start moaning, pleading with me not to look at how hard you got from it, acting all shocked and bashful over how much you liked it?”

Techie let out a high whine and shifted into his belly, rutted gracelessly against Matt. The water slowed his movements, and splashed over the side of the tub, but he was hard and shaking, fingers digging into Matt’s shoulders as he tried to find some friction. He groaned with frustration.

“Let’s get out of the bath,” Matt suggested, and Techie sat up so quick he swayed, maybe lightheaded from the heat or from arousal. He scrabbled for the small tray of complimentary toiletries on a shelf by the tub, and came up with a small bottle of cucumber-melon lotion.

“I’m gonna assume you don’t have lube. This isn’t perfect, but it’ll do for now.”

Matt looked at him for a long moment, took in the wet ends of his hair, his skin flushed with heat, his cock standing away from his body, ready. “Turn around for a minute,” Matt urged, and with some fumbling, Techie did.

“You gonna stretch me here? I don’t think we can fuck in this tub...” Techie noted, hesitant.

“Nope,” Matt answered, grabbing for the little hotel soap and lathering his hands. He spread Techie’s ass with his thumbs, just to get a look at him, and then slipped his soapy hands up and down the crease of it, teasing over his hole until Techie cried out. Only when Techie’s breath was coming out in high-pitched moans did he encourage Techie to lean forward a bit more so Matt could cup his hands and dump warm water over Techie’s hole until he was clean, then begin to thumb at the rim.

“You just said you weren’t gonna, mm, ohh—“ Techie babbled, thighs shaking as Matt teased his hole. All of Techie’s breath left him on a shivery groan when Matt hoisted his hips up and began tonguing him.

Fresh, soft, and clean, Techie’s hole was just right for Matt to lick and tease, draw the point of his tongue around, press a little in before withdrawing to lick from his taint to his tailbone. Techie almost sobbed, the bottle of lotion falling to the tiled floor as he gave in to it.

“Oh, fuck me, fuck me!” Techie moaned, thrusting his hips back into Matt’s face. Matt could feel slick saliva dripping down his chin and groaned into Techie’s hole. “Ooh, your voice, fuck...” Techie panted. “Touch my cock, please? I’m so, I can’t take it!”

“You’re gonna come into the bathwater,” Matt murmured, before slurping loudly over Techie’s ass. It was getting so loose and easy.

“I know, I know, but, please I’m so hard, please I’ll do anything!” Techie whined, and Matt relented, sliding one hand up to cup the head of Techie’s cock so he could thrust into Matt’s palm. “Oh, yeah, yes, more, please...!” Techie begged, Matt began to stroke him, doing his best to multitask. It was worth it for the way Techie seemed to come apart at the seams, trembling, moaning, pleading. “So good, Matt, so good. Your tongue is so...” Matt rubbed his thumb over the head of Techie’s cock, and made Techie completely lose what he was saying, dissolving into pitiful moans. “Wanna come,” he said finally, gripping one side of the tub in one hand, and the soap dish in the other, just to hold himself up out of the water. “I’m close, Matt, please, can I come? Tell me I can, please please, I’m gonna come over your fingers, please say yes?”

“Yeah baby, you can come for me,” Matt rumbled against techies wet hole, before pushing his tongue inside.

“Gonna come for you Matt, gonna, fuck—!” Techie bucked hard against Matt’s face, knocking his glasses askew, as he slicked Matt’s hand with his release. “So good so good so good,” he chanted, “Matt, fuck, yeah...” his cock twitched again and again, spilling thickly into Matt’s palm and down his wrist.

“You’re really coming a lot,” Matt commented warmly, kissing at Techie’s hole, drawing it out.

“I know, I can’t s-stop, so fucking, mm!” Techie pressed his thighs together, shook his head. “You gotta, too much, gonna pass out...”

Matt finally stopped stroking Techie’s overstimulated cock, and sank back against the tub again. He wiped his face with his clean hand and tried to reach a box of tissues on the back of the toilet.

“You don’t want to just wash your hand off in the water?” Techie asked, observing Matt over his shoulder.

“No, I mean, that’s kinda gross... I’m still sitting in the water, so, that’s...” Matt shrugged. Techie turned and reached over Matt to get him a few tissues.

“You did just have your tongue in my arse but alright, whatever you say,” he said. Matt took the tissues gratefully and wiped his fingers. He dropped them in a small square trash bin with embossed anchors on it. “Do you want me to suck you or something in here, or should we go close the curtains like you said?” Techie asked, tucking a damp lock of hair behind his ear. “If you were gonna finger me open, after all /that/, I’d probably be hard again by the time I was ready to take your cock. My hole is practically tingling from how well you licked it.” He squirmed a bit in the lukewarm bath. “Feel kinda empty actually,” he complained, reaching for Matt’s cock under the water. It jumped in his grip, needy, and Matt sucked in a breath. “I guess I’ve been kinda selfish, huh?” Techie commented, his thumb rubbing into Matt’s slit, “but you did say you’d been wanting to do that. Felt so good, Matt.” He shivered deliciously. “Even the water feels like it’s licking my hole, I’m so sensitive now.”

Techie was going to kill him with all this dirty talk.

“Why don’t you go close those curtains? I’ll dry off in here. When I get out there, I want to see you on the bed, fingering yourself for me.”

Techie went visibly redder, blushing all the way to his hairline. He stood from the bath, wobbled a little, then grabbed the lotion and a large fluffy blue towel, which he wrapped around his waist before stalking out into the main room. Matt smiled to himself. That had been a pretty bold thing to say, Matt knew— some people didn’t like being told what to do like that. Techie seemed to respond well to it, and so Matt took his time, drying off, washing his face, using a bit of mouthwash from the complimentary toiletry set, generally making sure his /look/ was about as good as it would get. He cleaned the fog from his glasses and stepped out into the main room. His erection had gone down a little, but it was still a visible bulge under his towel. As soon as Matt came in view of the bed, Techie’s eyes trained right on the tent Matt was pitching, and licked his lips.

Techie was on his back on the bed, the towel spread out under him. The lotion was open on the bedside table, giving the room a clean botanical scent that was a little at odds with the filthy image of Techie with his thighs spread wide, two fingers busily thrusting into his hole, other hand working one of his nipples, cock struggling to rise. His eyes were half-lidded, his pupils fat. He was flushed all over, his hips rolled, his back arched, and he was staring at Matt with an open hunger that made Matt’s erection start to swell again. He dropped the towel by the bed, and moved to pet over the crown of Techie’s head, cup his jaw.

“I know you said you don’t like being called a bad boy, but how do you feel about being called a /good/ boy?” Matt asked, and Techie whined.

“That’s, um, good...” Techie mumbled, pushing a third finger into himself. “You could call me that.”

“You are one,” Matt said. “Look at you, doing just as I told you.” He carded his fingers through Techie’s hair as much as he could, before the pillows got in the way.

“Mmhm... but um. I thought you said you liked it rough?” Techie looked up at him from under lowered lashes, and Matt chewed his lip.

“Am I being too gentle for you?” Matt soothed, before suddenly yanking Techie’s hair. “Is that better?”

Techie squeaked, pulled his fingers out of himself and gripped the towel, his eyelashes fluttering. His Adam’s apple bobbed with a convulsive swallow.

“Why don’t you uh, lift your legs up. Knees together,” Matt directed, spoiled for choice. Techie looked like a dream, all spread out and waiting for Matt to do what he would with him. Techie obeyed, pressing his legs together and lifting them up in the air. Matt came around the side of the bed, climbed up to help hold Techie’s ankles up. It was a nice view: Techie’s small, round ass, his tight, ruddy balls, his long, creamy thighs. Aiming carefully, Matt gave him a sharp spank, right at the tenderest spot where his thighs and ass met. Techie gasped, but stilled, waiting for another. Matt repeated the same treatment on the other side, and again Techie sucked in a hiccuping breath. After that, Matt picked up the pace, layering one strike over the last, alternating sides at random so Techie wouldn’t know where the next hit was coming, listening to Techie’s breath getting more and more labored. When Matt peeked around Techie’s legs, he saw that Techie’s cock was hard and red against his belly. Techie’s eyes were closed and he was panting heavily, his fingers fisted in the towel. Matt moved his next strike slightly, so he slapped over Techie’s balls, and Techie’s eyes flew open as he cried out, a spurt of precome landing in his navel.

“/Oh,/“ he groaned, blinking at the ceiling, writhing on the bed, pressing his thighs tighter together as if that would give him the friction he craved. Matt did it again and Techie moaned louder, one hand shooting up to grip his own hair, then land at the base of his throat.

“You like that, looks like,” Matt observed, tapping Techie’s reddened ass and balls lightly, just to tease him. 

“Unh-huh,” Techie answered, garbed. He squirmed again. “No one’s ever, but /fuck/ it feels so, EEK!”

Matt knew it was mean, but he gave Techie another sharp spank as he was talking, and laughed a little at the way it made Techie squeal. A glance at Techie’s face showed he wasn’t offended. He was leaning into the spanks with his whole body, canting his hips toward Matt in anticipation of another one.

“Wish I had a plug to put in you while I did this. Always wanted to do that: spank someone who had a nice big plug in their ass, making it jolt inside them every time I did /this/.” He punctuated his words with another stinging slap to the fleshiest part of Techie’s ass. Techie only moaned in response, feet twitching in the air. “You liked having your balls tortured though. I’d like to take a riding crop to them. Maybe put you in a cock ring to make them really rosy and sensitive before I did it. Put a vibrator in your ass so you wouldn’t know /how/ to feel.”

“Ooh, Matt...” Techie sighed as Matt stroked over his stinging ass, soothing the burn. “You’d drive me out of my head, huh?”

“Yeah,” Matt agreed, sliding his middle finger into Techie’s loosened hole. His rim was buttery smooth. “Speaking of driving, I’d like to see you take those little shorts down while I was driving us somewhere. Out on the highway in broad daylight, I’d like to watch you stroke yourself off onto your shirt. Almost wish my car had power windows so you’d never know if I was gonna roll them down, let the whole world hear you panting and moaning for your own touch.”

“Holy sh-shit!” Techie stuttered, as Matt pushed a second finger into him. “Oh fuck, you into, ummm... public stuff? Like, dogging and that?” 

“I don’t know what that is,” Matt admitted, slowly fingering Techie’s well-prepped ass, “I hope it’s not something with actual dogs.”

“Sex outside,” Techie clarified. “I’ve never, obviously, but maybe with /you/...” he trailed off, tossing his head on the pillow as Matt pushed his two fingers deep, started rubbing over Techie’s prostate. “Oh fuck. Oh, oh, fuck Matt, right there...!” He bore down on Matt’s fingers.

“Do you want me to fuck you? Bareback you? Do you want me to come on you and make you filthy after our bath?” Matt almost growled, pushing his fingers harder and harder into Techie’s slick hole.

“Yeah, I... wanna feel your cone leaking out of me. You’ve been playing with me so long I can’t wait to feel your come sliding out of my hole...” He reached for the lotion, waved it in Matt’s general direction. “Please, come on. I want you in me.”

“God, you are fucking gorgeous,” Matt murmured, slipping his fingers out of Techie and taking the lotion from him almost as an afterthought. Techie was right; it wouldn’t be the best lube but Matt wasn’t sure he’d last long enough for it to make a difference, after how long he’d been hard without touching his own cock. He slicked himself messily as Techie planted his feet on the bed and shoved a pillow under himself.

“Is this the position you like best?” Techie asked, holding his thighs open. His ass was still blotchy from the spanking.

“I like them all,” Matt answered, nudging his cock against Techie’s hole over and over, and making him whine.

“Please put it in, you’re teasing me like crazy, please please please!” Techie lifted his ass like that would coax Matt into him, then dropped his hips back onto the bed with a groan of frustration.

“Earlier you said you could act like I was forcing you,” Matt reminded him. “It’d be a little unconvincing now, the way you’re begging for my cock.”

Clawing at the towel, Techie said nothing, but continued to twist his hips, trying and failing to sit himself on Matt’s cock. Matt laughed and pushed forward just a little, so just the tip slid inside. Techie gasped and then cursed when Matt stopped there, rubbing at his eyes before glaring up at Matt. Was he already welling up with frustrated tears?

“You’re /terrible/,” Techie complained. “You’re a fucking monster. Gonna just keep me aching and gagging for it? Gonna make me lose my goddamn mind until you—AAH!”

Matt rammed the rest of the way in, choking Techie on his words. He leaned forward, grabbing each of Techie’s wrists and pinning them on either side of his head.

“Am I a fucking monster?” Matt growled, grinning, even as his glasses slipped down his nose. He drew back and thrust back in sharply, punching an animal sound out of Techie. Techie chewed his lips and nodded, blinking rapidly.

“Your /cock/ is a fucking monster,” Techie rasped, “holy shit!”

Matt laughed again, and let go of one of Techie’s wrists just long enough to take off his glasses and set them on the bedside table. After that, though, he pinned both wrists, and leaned the bulk of his weight into them as he snapped his hips. Techie’s knees came up, his ankles crossed at Matt’s back, and he squeezed Matt’s sides with his thighs.

“You like that? Like being pinned down and helpless?” Matt asked, watching Techie’s face go red and feeling the twitches of his cock between their bellies. “You don’t know what I could do to you. You barely know me. You don’t even know my last name.”

“It’s on your duffel bag,” Techie said, like a smart-ass. “You don’t know /my/ last name though. I could rob you blind and you’d never be able to find me.”

“I’ll just have to fuck you until you can’t walk then,” Matt replied, bucking in harder, so Techie squealed each time he was hit deep, “then you won’t get far. I’ll come and find you where you’ve collapsed and then fuck you again as punishment. Right where you were. I’d hold you down on your belly, wrench your little shorts down, and you’d still be so loose and slick from this, you’d take it, easy.”

Techie moaned, thighs shaking on either side of Matt’s hips, and threw his head back. “What if I only did it because,” he gulped loudly, struggling with his words, “b-because, I knew you’d come and get me. Knew you’d have to, mmm, fuck some sense into me?”

“Then I’d spank your slutty cock,” Matt answered, hardly thinking about his words. Techie gasped harshly.

“I bet that would, umm, really hurt,” Techie whispered, almost awestruck. “Not sure it would dissuade me though. Maybe you’d have to tie me to the bed to keep me from, mm, you know... misbehaving.”

“Hey now, a while ago you were suggesting putting me in a collar for the same reason,” Matt said, and Techie nodded.

“Maybe we both need, h-help, um, not getting into trouble,” Techie suggested. Matt changed his angle and thought about that: helping each other stay on the straight and narrow. It made it seem like they were going to stay together for a while longer, instead of just as long as it took to get Techie to an Irish embassy.

“Maybe,” he said. “I think you’d like being tied to the bed, though. Especially if I just left you like that, maybe put one of those remote-controlled vibrators on you and walked away, so you never knew if you’d get to come or not... or if I’d just leave it on so it kept going even after you came. You’d be so messy by the time I got back. Right?”

It took Techie a while to respond. The new angle had his fingers and toes clenching and he was moaning continuously. “Uh-huh,” he said at last. “Matt you’re gonna make me come without touching my cock.” He strained to rub himself against Matt’s lower abdomen, but Matt sat back and let go of Techie’s wrists. Techie wailed and sat up, following Matt as he pulled out. “Whyyyy,” he whined, but Matt shook his head.

“Turn over,” Matt instructed, and Techie clumsily rolled into his hands and knees. “Good,” Matt said, smoothing one calming hand up from Techie’s hip to his mid-back, “now stay there a sec.”

A low sound of complaint rose out of Techie but he dutifully kept his head down while Matt stripped the cover off of one of the pillows and folded it up into a long thin strip. He wrapped it gently around Techie’s eyes and tied it behind his head, a makeshift blindfold. He leaned close, whispered directly into Techie’s ear.

“Is that okay?”

Nodding silently, Techie licked his lips and shifted his weight, wiggling his ass in the air. Matt pet down Techie’s narrow back, rubbed gently over the faint bruises rising from the spanking. 

“You bruise so easy,” he commented quietly, tracing the discolored patches of skin. “Do you think you’ll feel this in the car tomorrow?”

Techie nodded again. It was as if he’d lost his ability to speak as soon as the blindfold went on.

“Hey uh, push the pillows off the bed or something if you need me to stop, or if I do something you don’t like, okay?” Matt offered. He didn’t /really/ want to take advantage of Techie if he’d gone non-verbal. Well, maybe the sickest part of him did, a little, but he squashed that down. He bent over Techie’s back and rubbed his cock up and down the crease of his ass. Techie sighed brokenly, and nodded again, so Matt pressed a kiss to the sweep of one shoulder and guided himself in again.

He got better leverage like that, and soon Techie had broken his silence, but it wasn’t for /words/. It was for thin, reedy moans he couldn’t stop once he’d started, and soon after that, his arms gave out, and he pressed his cheek into the blanket, breathing harsh and wet, ass up for Matt’s use. His hands were free, but he seemed to have forgotten how to use them, and they lay limp on either side of him, curled weakly, fingers twitching each time Matt pushed in. Matt figured he’d have to take over, and reached under Techie to wrap a loose fist around Techie’s cock. It was slippery with precome, hot in his hand, and Techie sobbed as Matt stroked him.

“Still good?” Matt asked, and maybe it wasn’t accurate to the fantasy of cruel mistreatment they’d built together before, but Matt liked the look of Techie, nodding fervently and drooling into the coverlet. Techie’s moans got higher pitched, more urgent, his body rolling into Matt’s every thrust until Matt let him go and pulled out again. This time, Techie didn’t complain, he just sagged against the bed, ass still held up, thighs quivering. Matt gave his ass an affectionate little pat before slipping off the bed and back into the bathroom. He’d seen it earlier, and now seemed like the perfect time— he picked up a pillar candle in a soft blue color, and rifled in his duffel for a lighter. Once the candle was lit, it took a moment for the wax to pool. Matt wondered if Techie could smell the faint scent of the candle, if he’d figured out what Matt was planning from the click of the lighter.

“This is gonna sting,” he warned. “Do you still want it?”

Techie nodded immediately, shoving his ass towards Matt insistently. Unable to resist, Matt tipped the candle and let the hot wax hit Techie’s tailbone, and splatter across his lower back.

“Ahh! Mmm,” was all Techie said, wriggling. The wax cooled and hardened on Techie’s skin, and as he shifted from side to side, impatient, it flaked off in places, leaving tiny red welts in its place. Matt drizzled the melted wax up Techie’s spine next, and got a shuddering sigh. He slipped two fingers of his free hand into Techie’s hole, just to keep it company while he waited for the melted wax to gather again.

“You’ll take just about anything I give you,” Matt murmured, impressed. Almost as if to prove it, he tilted the candle again, spilled it down the crease of Techie’s ass, where it met his over-sensitized rim pulled around Matt’s fingers.

“Oh! Ohhh,” Techie groaned, a violent shudder going through him. He bit into a pillow to stifle himself when Matt did it again. He could feel the hot wax hitting his fingers, knew it must be delicious agony on Techie’s puffy hole, and waited for the wax to congeal before flicking it away with his thumb so he could thrust his fingers back into Techie again.

He was harder than he could ever remember being but it had gone on so long it felt manageable. Felt like he could do this forever. He dripped hot wax over Techie’s bruised ass and listened to his sharp intake of breath.

“Bet you’d even like it pouring over the head of your cock. What if I had you kneel up on the bathroom floor, knees spread, and lit this candle under you while you sucked my cock? You’d feel the heat rising, right under your balls. You’d have to be careful to keep your posture, or else you’d sit on the flame,” Matt suggested, and Techie moaned into the pillows. Matt pulled his fingers out and spilled a puddle of hot wax directly over Techie’s hole so it dripped down over his taint and balls. “I kinda wish this wax was a brighter color,” Matt mused, as Techie gulped in wet gasps, “so it contrasted more with your skin. Melted, it’s sort of a pale gray color. Like the ocean was, earlier.”

“Nnh, uhh...” Techie mumbled, clumps of dried wax flaking off of him and falling onto the towel. His fingers gripped the coverlet, and his whole body was taut as a bowstring, waiting for the next splatter of stinging heat. Matt waited a little longer that time, allowed more hot wax to collect, petting one of Techie’s calves softly until he gripped Techie above the knee and flipped him. He bounced a bit on the mattress and a little wax spilled over Matt’s hand but he was able to save most of it for his intended purpose which was pouring the hot wax down one soft, tender thigh to the base of his cock and then up the other thigh. Techie’s cock twitched and his body convulsed. He cried out, desperate, and Matt blew out the candle, set it aside. He grabbed the lotion instead, slicked his cock, and lifted one of Techie’s long legs up over his shoulder so he could thrust in at a new angle and make Techie wail. He was the best thing Matt had ever seen in his life: hard, flushed, drooling, blindfolded, covered in bruises and welts and traces of hot wax.

“I could spend, all my money,” Matt grit out as he snapped his hips at a punishing pace, “buying toys to use on you. You’d look so pretty in nipple clamps, or one of those posture collars. A nice ring gag. A vibrator in your ass and another one dangling from the ceiling just above your cock so it would only touch you when the pendulum swung, and each time it came up against you, your hips would jerk and it would swing away again. I could tie you up so many ways— I was a sailor you know. I’m good at knots.” Knots hadn’t really been a major part of his life on an aircraft carrier, but Techie didn’t have to know that. He’d learn some really good ones if Techie wanted. He hugged to Techie’s leg, ground his cock inside, and Techie reached for his cock but stopped short, hand hovering tentatively over the leaking head. He twisted his head, turning his face toward Matt with an expression legible even with the blindfold obscuring his eyes. /Please, can I?/ the look said. Matt bit his lips and groaned, then took Techie’s hand and guided it around his own cock.

“Show me,” Matt hissed. There were red and black spots dancing in his vision. He was going to come so hard, it was going to be devastating, he could tell. Techie didn’t look far off. “Show me how much you like it,” Matt commanded, and Techie obeyed, closing his fist on his cock and stroking himself fast. Matt could hear the clip of Techie’s fingers, could hear him panting open-mouthed and the almost pained sounds in his throat.

“Love it,” Techie said, tongue clumsy after being non-verbal so long. “Love it, love it. So good. Such good pain, so deep, fuck!” His free arm scrabbled under the pillows, and he pressed his lips together, his brows furrowing above the blindfold as he whined, “mm, mmh, mnh ahh, ahn, AAH-! Matt! Matt! Fuck!” He shoved a pillow into his mouth and screamed, head thrown back, whole body bucking violently as he came in stripes over his belly, his fingers, and the towel. Matt couldn’t hold on after that. The sight of Techie lost in pleasure, the feeling of him clenching and spasming, had Matt coming in seconds, groaning a deep animal sound as he fucked his come into Techie’s waiting hole. Techie continued to whimper broken sounds into the pillow as Matt’s hips chased the feeling, as he milked himself into Techie’s ass.

“Oohhhhh...” Techie rumbled, muffled by the pillow. His limbs were limp as Matt carefully pulled out, but Techie still shivered as Matt’s come followed him out, running out of his ass to soak into the towel. Matt watched it with a fascinated grunt, watched Techie’s red, used hole practically throb as the mess of Matt’s release slid out of him. “Ooooh,” Techie cooed, a delicious tremor running from the roots of his hair to the tips of his toes. He was a sight, collapsed with his thighs still spread wide, faint red welts from the hot wax running down each thigh and pointing to his soft, exhausted cock, come leaking out of him and smeared across his skin, hands numbly pushing a pillow away from his sweaty, blotchy face. The blindfold had fallen askew and lay crumpled under his head, adding to the mess that was his hair. His lips were bitten red and his eyes were bright. He let out a long breath. Matt sat back and stretched his legs out in front of him on either side of Techie’s slim frame. He didn’t know what to say.

“Fuck, that hot wax on my arsehole was really something,” Techie said. “I’d never done that before.” He reclined like someone had cut his strings, a sprawl on the bed.

“Should I have told you before I did it, what I was doing?” Matt asked, slightly abashed.

“Ehh,” Techie dismissed. “Some people might say so, but I liked the surprise. The spontaneity. The um... like, feeling of danger, not knowing what you’d do to me or what it’d feel like.” He blinked at Matt down the length of his body. “You told me it would hurt and I accepted that. So. Maybe you don’t have to worry so much?”

Matt didn’t think it was that simple, but let it lie.

“Did you still want to go to the beach?” Matt asked, and Techie shifted his feet slightly on the coverlet.

“Oof, my legs are like noodles right now,” Techie confessed, “I can’t imagine walking on sand like this.” He tugged the towel out from under himself with a great effort, wiped half-heartedly at his stomach and between his legs. He offered the towel to Matt, who took it a bit ruefully, feeling a bit sorry for the hotel cleaning staff. He toweled the worst of the mess off of himself, and walked stiffly into the bathroom to drop the towel in the empty tub. Without his glasses, his reflection in the mirror was just a vague Matt-shaped blur, which he thought was probably for the best. He didn’t think he really looked his best post-coitally, sweaty and blotchy with his hair a mess. On second thought, he leaned toward the mirror and tried to fix his hair somewhat, wanting to at least put in a little bit of effort for Techie.

When he walked back out into the main room, though, Techie was asleep. The makeshift blindfold was still crunched up under his head as he snored lightly, naked on top of the covers. Carefully, Matt slid in behind him, trying not to disturb Techie too much as he got under the covers. It wasn’t late at all, probably still afternoon though the thick curtains made it hard to tell, but Matt was exhausted. It had been a hell of a day. He could only hope that things would stay relatively normal if he closed his eyes for a few hours. His heart pounded even as he tried to relax, looking at a roadmap of thin pale scars on Techie’s back. He knew it was ridiculous but something in him was keeping him awake, as if afraid that if he went to sleep, was less alert, something bad would happen to them. He wanted to reach out, gather Techie to his chest, bury his nose in messy red hair as if that could assure him that it was fine, they were fine, they were going to be okay and that woman wouldn’t come bursting through the door to shoot them where they lay. He used to have nightmares about the war, about the conflict he couldn’t see, far beyond the shores of the Gulf. This, though, he’d seen up close. He knew he’d be seeing that woman’s face lurking at the shadowy corners of his vision for a long, long time. Eventually though, his exhaustion won out over his anxiety, and all he could do was sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

He awoke hours later, and the room was filled with the blue-white glow of early evening through plastic blinds. Techie was awake, staring at him in the semi-darkness, and Matt startled a little, propped himself up on his elbow.

“What’s up?” Matt asked, by which he meant, ‘is something wrong’, and also, ‘if there /isn’t/ something immediately wrong, I don’t want to /make/ something wrong by upsetting you with my constant worry’. He wasn’t sure Techie would understand all of that from a simple colloquialism. Techie shook his head in response.

“What time is it?” Techie asked, and Matt had to roll over to look at the clock on the bedside.

“Oh wow, it’s nearly seven o’clock,” Matt replied, getting a strange sense of vertigo from waking up at an hour like that. “We should maybe consider dinner.”

Techie shrugged and Matt knew he was uncomfortable about being unable to pay for his food. Matt didn’t want to say anything about that— they’d been over it before.

“I don’t know what’s around here, obviously. Do you think we should ask at the front desk?” Matt sat up in the bed. He realized he might’ve been doing that same thing as before, the same thing his family always did: avoiding an unpleasant subject by talking past it, as if it didn’t exist. At some point in their nap, Techie had tucked himself under the blankets, and now tugged the sheet up as he scooted into a half-reclining position.

“I could go ask, if you want,” he offered, chewing his lips. He hunched his shoulders in and brought his knees up under the blankets, wrapped his arms loosely around them. The way he said it broke Matt’s heart a little; it was so mundane, but it was as if that was the only thing Techie had to give, and so Matt wrapped his arms around him and kissed his cheek, his temple, his ear. “Hey!” Techie laughed, “I can’t go ask if you keep kissing me!”

Matt gave him one more kiss on the jaw, and let him go. He flicked on the light and watched as Techie shuffled around collecting his discarded clothing, saw Techie sniff his yellow shirt. It was probably acrid with fear sweat and Matt called out to him before he put it on.

“Do you want to borrow a shirt?”

Techie looked at him with a slight smirk.

“Nothing you own is gonna fit me. You’re built like a superhero.”

“I’m not /that/ big,” Matt protested, though he was grinning.

“You’d be loaning me a poncho, not a shirt. A tent, even.” Still, Techie hadn’t put his shirt back on, and when Matt roused himself to cross the room and tug a mostly clean (though fairly old) Rolling Stones T-shirt out of his duffel bag, Techie pulled it over his head without complaint. He didn’t even try to hide how he immediately held the cloth up over his nose and took a deep breath. “Smells like you,” he said, and while it was something of an obvious statement, it made something bright and warm settle in Matt’s chest, so he didn’t say anything to it.

Techie was close to his height, but the shirt was still several sizes too big for him, and it hung past the frayed hem of his shorts. He tucked the front of the shirt in sloppily, and only on one side, if only so it didn’t look like he wasn’t wearing any pants. Of course, the shorts barely counted as pants /anyway/, but Matt thought it was a cute look. His expression must have said so, because Techie hooked the thumb of one hand into an exposed belt loop and then blew a kiss with the other. His hair was a mess, but it didn’t make him any less attractive. He looked rather like the androgynous models of grunge fashion Matt had been fascinated by in the 90s, before he’d had any real concept of his sexuality, whose pictures he’d carefully torn out of magazines. Matt wanted to think of a way to tell him that, but was distracted by the stretched-out collar of the shirt falling coquettishly off of Techie’s shoulder.

“Christ,” Matt said, hoarse, “how are you real?”

Techie only smiled, and slipped out of the room.

Matt sat on the bed again. He wasn’t sure he’d ever recover from this day. It all seemed so surreal, and he’d likely worry about it for the rest of his life, whether or not that woman would get his information from Mr. Plutt, or the little old lady at the motel, and hunt him down, or... well, Techie had said she was in the business of identity theft, hadn’t he? He wanted to go to the authorities, but he didn’t want anything to happen to Techie. Was Matt himself technically harboring a fugitive or something, by knowingly providing accommodations to someone without a valid visa? He didn’t know. Waking up in the evening after a long nap made him feel like his head wasn’t quite screwed on right. Through the fog in his mind, he replayed the events of the previous 24 hours over and over again: having his motel broken into, being in a shootout, driving for hours, bareback fucking the person who broke into his motel room, and passing out next to him. Kissing him like a besotted lover when they woke up again. It was true: Techie could easily have robbed him blind while he slept. He could have taken his money and his keys and be on the road already. Instantly, Matt checked the dresser and found his car keys where he’d left them. He dug around in his bag and found his cash as well, and felt a little bad about it when Techie knocked to be let back in. Techie had been through so much, had let Matt hold him down and fuck him, but Matt still couldn’t trust him completely, and he wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Unaware of Matt’s internal struggle, Techie held out some printed fold-outs advertising local restaurants.

Matt hardly looked at them.

“Do any of them strike your fancy?” he asked, scrounging in his bag for clean underwear.

“Umm. I dunno, I haven’t really had a huge variety of foods in the last few years. But the picture on this Cuban menu looks good?” Techie took a few steps closer, proffered the sheet. Matt pushed his glasses up his nose to look.

“Yeah alright I feel like I could eat a whole baked chicken. With beans and rice and fried bananas and honey.” He pulled up his pants, unrolled a pair of socks. Techie watched him intensely, as if seeing a man sit to put on socks was a new and confounding experience. “Here,” Matt said, to distract him, “Do you want to use my comb?” He gestured vaguely to the zipper pocket on the side of his duffel.

“Oh, yeah, I bet I look like something a cat coughed up,” Techie admitted, shuffling into the bathroom. This allowed Matt to move money from his duffel into his wallet unobserved, though guilt twinged within him as he did it.

A little while later, they were back in Matt’s car. Techie stared out the window at the eucalyptus trees lining the road, chewing absently at his nails. He sat in a very particular way, probably aching from having been spanked and fucked, but he didn’t voice one word of complaint.

“Is this day ever going to feel less surreal?” he asked, facing the window. “I mean I guess maybe like, tomorrow, after we’ve slept properly and stuff. I don’t think a sex coma counts.”

Matt made a noncommittal response. The small map on the back of the restaurant’s flyer was very basic, and he had to concentrate to avoid driving around in circles. Still, Techie had a point. Their sleep schedules over the past 48 hours had been highly unusual, and it made the day seem longer than it was. Matt was trying his best to pretend he hadn’t been shot at /that very morning/, trying to act normal, like the man in his passenger seat wasn’t on the run. It had been maybe fourteen hours since their stand off with that woman and her /goons/, but the more Matt drove, the more it felt like time was spiraling out behind them, stretching into infinity. He hoped he’d be able to get ahead of it. Would he always feel like this, like he was under the gun, so long as Techie was beside him?

His heart panged, and he could not rationalize it. He knew they barely knew each other, and he also knew he had the dangerous habit of falling a little bit in love with everyone he fucked, but it wasn’t fair to Techie to saddle him with all these conflicting emotions. He pulled into the parking lot of an outdoor shopping area, and drove around to find a spot. He’d have to let Techie lead on this, whatever /this/ was now, between them, where they’d go, having been through what they had. If Techie wanted to part ways once they got to an embassy, maybe that was fine. Matt would have to find a way to live with that. He’d have to find a way to close the cover on another wild, strange chapter of his life and avoid thinking about it until it was far enough away that he could look back on it all like it was a shockingly vivid dream.

If Techie /didn’t/ want to walk away from him, Matt didn’t know what would happen.

Dinner was flavorful and filling, and leagues better than french fries and diner coffee. Techie seemed very careful about the way he ate, a kind of embarrassed anxiety in the set of his shoulders. Matt chose not to mention it, which wasn’t /avoiding things/ if it was just being polite. He insisted that to himself, actually having a conversation with himself in his own mind— instead of just, you know, /thinking/ like a normal person does— which had become an increasingly frequent habit in the days and weeks he’d spent alone since his discharge. They were maybe the only customers in the whole restaurant just sitting and eating in silence, but Techie didn’t try to start conversation, either, so Matt let it lie. Perhaps the day was finally catching up to them in a meaningful way. Matt winced, thinking of how he’d been distracted by his own dick and now that it was satisfied his higher brain functions had politely shoved his libido aside and taken the reins to drive him headlong past moderate and into full-scale freakout territory. He sawed into his chicken just to give his hands something to do. He needed something to do with his hands or else he’d lash out, he’d make a scene, he might chuck the table or crash his car and Techie would be caught in the crossfire because someone was always in the crossfire. People got hurt when Matt got like this and nothing, not therapy, not drugs, not the military, not his mother’s watery eyes or Techie’s creamy thighs ever made it go away. What the fuck was he supposed to do with that? How was he supposed to live his life like this, knowing that just around the corner there could be the tiniest little thing, the most meaningless unimportant thing, and it would set him off and he’d fly off the handle again? He’d ruined his own life with his inability to control himself and he was just moments away at any time from dragging Techie down with him, and how would he be able to live with himself after doing that to someone who had already been through hell? It was clear from the way Techie ate, the way he ducked down, trying to eat without being noticed, like a mouse trying to quietly fill his belly on grain until the cat next came around. It was unfair, and Matt gripped his fork so hard in his hand the metal felt like it was grinding his bones. He didn’t want to be the next person to make Techie cower like that. He didn’t want to add to the weight on Techie’s already slumped shoulders. But what could he do? He couldn’t just leave Techie, alone like he was with not a penny on him, without a change of clothes or a passport or a friend in the whole world it seemed. He’d just have to keep it together, in a way he hadn’t been particularly good at over the last 27 years. Sure. He could totally change completely as a person, pull another, more functional personality out of thin air and wear that around. He could definitely do /that/ overnight, just stomp his personality flaws down into the soles of his shoes and never think about them again. That was realistic. He pushed the last of his rice around on his plate.

Techie looked up for a moment but didn’t say anything. Instead he noticed that Matt had nearly cleared his plate, and immediately started eating faster, as if worried that if Matt finished before him, he wouldn’t wait. Matt chewed his lip and slowly slid a hand across the table. He tapped Techie on the wrist and frowned when Techie startled visibly.

“You don’t have to finish now,” Matt said. “We don’t have anywhere to be.”

“Oh, uh,” Techie mumbled, rice clinging to his lips. Matt’s heart ached, realizing he’d probably embarrassed the other man. “I mean, I um, I kn-know I eat kinda slow s-sometimes.” He licked the rice from his lower lip, pushed black beans and chicken together on his plate.

“You don’t, it’s fine,” Matt said. “And we can box it up if you want to. Whatever.” He wished he could lighten the mood somewhat. “Hey uh. After this, do you want to maybe drive around a bit? We could find a library, and go tomorrow to do a bit of research on, I dunno. Sorting out your passport situation?”

“Um, yeah, I guess,” Techie answered, pushing food around on his plate. “I should also look into, like, finding an electronics store. I probably won’t get a terrific price for that RFID... but like. Enough to buy toiletries. That’s... a start. Oh god, Matt, I can’t believe I’m basically starting over.”

Matt shifted in his seat. “Well. Once you get your passport or whatever worked out, um, you can at least head back to Ireland where, I dunno, do you have other family there?”

One shoulder shucked up, falling out of the collar of Techie’s borrowed shirt again. “Nobody I could really rely on to, you know, let me live with them. My dad kicking me out was what started all this. He wouldn’t let me come crawling back, even if I wanted to.”

Unable to help himself, Matt reached across the table and grabbed Techie’s hand. He squeezed it, petted over the knuckles with his thumb. “You hang tight,” he instructed, going to the hostess to pay and request a box so Techie wouldn’t see the bill brought to their table. He brought the box back and helped Techie scoop his leftovers into it before heading to the car again. Sometime soon, he’d have to buy gasoline again, but for now he opened the door for Techie and ambled around the car to the driver’s side.

“You were a pretty good getaway driver,” he said, observing Techie’s profile cast in sharp contrast by the streetlights through the windshield. “And that move with the car door was smart.”

Techie wriggled in his seat. “We oughta wipe this doorframe down. Clean the blood off,” he said. Matt hadn’t noticed any blood but he was fairly sure there would be some, if he inspected the steel edge.

“Yeah, like CSI or something,” Matt said.

“NCIS, in your case,” Techie joked. Matt started the car and gave him a grim smile.

“I’m not in the Navy anymore, remember?”

“I guess not. You’re still built like a marine though. Christ, I could spend all night just licking your abs and pecs, could’ve skipped dinner and just eaten you up.” He paused, fidgeting. “Not that I’m ungrateful. Thank you for dinner. For everything. I promise, I’ll try to find an electronics shop tomorrow and I’ll sell that RFID and then maybe I can at least pay you back for dinner. Dunno about the hotel, b-but, um, maybe—“

He’d begun fretting again and Matt reached across the center console at a stop light to squeeze Techie’s thigh. 

“Don’t worry about it. Um, to be honest with you, the whole time I was in the Service I was... more or less fantasizing about this kind of thing. Finding a gorgeous guy I could um. Buy dinners for and stuff.”

Techies fingers twisted in his lap. “Like a boyfriend?”

“I guess.”

“Christ Matt,” Techie sighed, dreamily, “I really wish we’d met under different circumstances, and we could go about all this like normal people. As it is, you know, I’ll probably be deported.”

Matt’s heart wrenched. That was the kindest turn-down he’d ever received, but it still hurt. A hysterical part of him wanted to suggest they get married for citizenship, but that seemed a shade too far.

“You don’t know that yet. We’ll just have to see what we find out at the library tomorrow,” Matt soothed, gripping the steering wheel and vowing to be less moony and clingy, like a lovesick teen.

“If I do get shipped back to Ireland, would you come visit me? Assuming I land on my feet eventually and don’t, I dunno, die in a ditch?”

“Oh god, um. Yeah, if I could afford it.”

“What if I get shuffled between immigrant detention centers while your government decides what to do with me?”

“I dunno. I’d hope you’d get some clemency because you were the victim of a crime.” Matt honestly did not know enough about this to be fielding these sorts of questions.

“They’re gonna make me confess, aren’t they,” Techie murmured miserably. “I’m gonna have to, to talk about everything Mama did to me, and they’re gonna stand there and l-look at me like, why didn’t you try huh-harder to get away? The road was right there, why didn’t you jump the fence and hitchhike sooner? They’re gonna think I wanted to b-be there, and that’s why I let her, I let her—”

With restless fingers, he began picking at the scab on his forehead. Matt couldn’t see it, couldn’t take his eyes off the road long enough, but the cuts were fresh enough Matt knew they’d bleed.

“Techie, stop it,” he pleaded, feeling impotent, not knowing how to convince Techie he’d been a /victim/, and wasn’t to blame, without making Techie feel helpless, useless, childish. “You told me you did try to get away.”

Techie gave a bitter laugh. “It didn’t work out well for me,” he snipped. “I tried hopping the fence when everyone was asleep. Thought I’d flag down a passing car.” He stretched his legs out in the footwell, splayed his fingers on his thighs and seemed to consider the spaces between them. “No one stopped. I couldn’t even walk very far down the road before. Before... one of her security guys found me.” He spoke in a hollow voice, and when Matt glanced at him, he saw that Techie was sitting up straight and staring dead ahead, reporting the story robotically. “She cut her name into my skin and then. And then locked me in a horse trailer for two days. No food, no water. I was so thirsty when she let me out, I’d do anything for a cup of water, and she knew it. Made me swear I’d never defy her again. Then she let me drink, asked if I felt better. I think I must’ve nodded. She asked if I still meant what I said, about never disobeying again, and I hesitated, so she did the cuts over again, but deeper. Let me bleed for a while. Dunno how long. I was pretty sure there was no way out after that. No one stopped, or even slowed down.”

“You reached out to me,” Matt reminded him. “Even broke into my room. That took some serious balls, after what you just told me.”

“I dunno. It was a pretty desperate move. You could’ve reacted badly, and you’re obviously strong. You could’ve bashed my head in, thinking I was a burglar.” He lifted his hips, straightened his shorts and fell heavily into the seat again. “I think at that point I was ready for it. Dying at the hands of a stranger would’ve been better than another second on that farm.”

Matt was just driving aimlessly, turning now and then when it was convenient. He figured it would be pretty hard to get lost; he could just orient himself to the ocean, and that’s where the hotel would be, more or less. He wanted this time with Techie though, even if the topic of discussion was less than cheerful.

“Well you don’t have to talk about breaking into my room when you talk about what you’ve been through since coming to the States,” Matt quipped. He heard Techie’s shrug, his shirt against the seat.

“There’s a sign, public library. Left,” Techie announced, pointing it out. Despite knowing it would be closed, Matt made the turn anyway. Might as well see what the parking situation was like, he thought for a moment, before admitting it was just an excuse to stretch out the hours he had with Techie before they’d be forced to try to sleep. The morning would come, they’d check out of their hotel, and real life would resume again.

“Looks like a pretty good-sized library,” Matt commented as they rolled past. There weren’t many cars on this side street, allowing Matt to idle next to the library and peer up at its dark windows. Maybe they’d have some books on immigration law. “We might wanna go early to make sure we get a computer,” he went on.

“Is it free to use the computers at a public library here?” Techie asked, and Matt looked over at him. How strange it must be to have spent several years in a country and not experience any of it.

“Yeah, it’s free. They might charge a couple cents to print stuff, though.” Matt also hadn’t been inside a public library in years, but he was fairly sure that was how they worked. “And I’ve got nowhere to be so, we can spend all day if you want, researching.”

Techie snorted. “Sounds like a laugh riot,” he mumbled, but he was smiling when he cast a look at Matt. “You’re really being good to me, Matt,” he said. “I wish. I wish there was something I could do to be good to /you/.”

Matt tried not to call up images of how /good to him/ Techie had been back in the hotel room, moaning so prettily, fingering himself open, everything he’d done to be one of if not the best fuck of Matt’s life. He felt his face flushing and hoped Techie couldn’t see it in the dark. He eased the car down the road and back out onto the highway, chewing his lip. He couldn’t believe himself, imagining all the ways he could offer for Techie to be ‘good to him’. That would be the exact thing he swore he wouldn’t do to Techie: accept sex in exchange for kindness. Matt was disgusted with himself for the surge of heat he still felt, picturing Techie’s reaction if he said, ‘I know a way you can be good to me,’ and pulled over to get some hot, fast road head.

“I think I can guess what you’re thinking,” Techie said in a light tone. Matt heard the zipper of techies shorts inching down. Matt gulped, worried he wouldn’t be able to keep his eyes on the road if Techie was about to do what Matt thought he was gonna do. “But um, you should know that wouldn’t be fair. I want you too much for sex to be equivalent payment. I could ride you all night and still not pay you back because I enjoy it way way too much. So you’re not putting me out, you know?” He laughed through his nose. “I’ll put out enough for the both of us.”

Matt prayed for a red light so he could look over at Techie, really look at him, for more than a second. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Techie pulling his borrowed shirt up, sucking two fingers into his mouth to rub at his own nipple.

“You mentioned this earlier, Matt. Dunno if I’ll ever think of anything else anytime I’m in this car,” Techie said, quietly. His other hand dipped into his open shorts to squeeze his cock through his underwear. “Don’t crash, okay?”

“Unh-huh,” Matt slurred, attention badly split between driving safely and watching Techie palm himself to hardness in the passenger seat.

“Ohhh, Matt,” Techie groaned loudly, finally pulling his cock free, “wish I could be sucking your cock while I did this. I’d love that, you fucking my face, holding me down so I choke on your dick. I’d be fucking my fist raw.”

“Oh, fuck,” Matt answered, shifting in his seat. His cock was filling and he’d never tried to drive with an erection before. He might have to pull over before too long, because he could hear the soft rasp of Techie’s fingers against his cock, and it was limiting his ability to concentrate on anything else.

“You’re so strong, you could basically do anything you wanted with me. I... I think I’d like it if you tried. If you um. Overpowered me and pushed my face down, fucked me hard without any warning. Held the back of my neck down so I couldn’t move.” His fist sped up, and Matt slowed the car at a light. He was trying to navigate them in the direction of the hotel so he could take his pants off as soon as possible. He wouldn’t be able to take this much longer, but he finally braved a look at Techie. His mouth flooded. He wanted to lick Techie all over, wanted to suck his small nipples until they bruised, wanted to bite lurid marks into his throat. In a word, Techie was gorgeous, arching in his seat, pinching his nipple, throwing his head back and thumbing the slit of his cock to smear wetness around. His legs were spread as much as the footwell allowed, and his hips pitched back and forth like he was seeking to be filled.

“I wish I had a dildo or something. Fuck, Matt, fuck, you filled me so good I feel so empty without your dick in me, I— yeek!”

Techie let go of his cock and grabbed for the arm rest while Matt pulled a sharp turn into the small lot of a 24 hour CVS.

“You want to um. Here?” Techie stuttered, but Matt was unbuckling his seatbelt so fast it clanged against his door.

“Tuck yourself under your shirt a second,” he said, raking his eyes down Techie’s body as he slowly tugged the shirt down to cover his cock, “I don’t want anyone else getting an eyeful before I’m done with you.”

Techie licked his lips. “Are you going into the store?”

“Yeah. Better get something slicker than lotion if you’re gonna keep riling me up like this.”

“Matt...” Techie caught his hand before he slid out of the driver’s seat. Matt met his eyes, but all Techie did was squeeze his fingers with a little smile. “Hurry back,” he urged, before letting Matt go.

The line at the drugstore seemed to take forever, and when he returned to the car with some real lubricant, Techie wasn’t as hard under Matt’s shirt as he had been.

“Let’s go back to the hotel?” Matt offered, and Techie nodded.

“Do you think we’re ever gonna get enough of each other?” Techie asked, and Matt had to quash his first thought: that they probably wouldn’t have enough time together to find out.

“Let’s hope not,” he said instead, heading west toward the water.

Techie was on him as soon as the hotel room door closed behind them. Matt lifted him, easily, by the thighs, held him with hands under his small ass, and let Techie kiss him, let him moan into his mouth and murmur filthy promises.

“You’re everything I’ve ever wanted,” he gushed, hands feverish over Matt’s shoulders and chest. “My knight in shining armor on a white horse.”

Matt snorted. “The only true part of that is that my car is white.”

“You swept me off my feet,” Techie went on, unperturbed. “I swooned the moment I saw you. I wanted to climb up the length of you and never come down.” He kissed Matt’s neck over and over, seemingly chasing a swell of emotion. “I didn’t think I’d get to, you know. I thought I was gonna die on that farm. Not that I’d grow old there, but that, like, Mama would get angry and decide to punish me, and she’d go too far. Slice me too deep to heal. I thought I’d be fertilizer for a peach tree one day.”

“Let’s not talk about that,” Matt said, trying to stay in the moment.

“I just, I want you to know you’re special. And that I, um. I dunno. I wanna give you everything of myself because you deserve it.” He nuzzled into the soft spot beneath Matt’s ear. “I can’t believe how lucky I got, meeting you.”

A part of Matt still worried Techie was driven by a need to repay him, but he squashed that down, kneading Techie’s ass.

“I can’t believe how lucky /I/ got, meeting someone who’d jack off in the passenger seat beside me, because I said I wanted to watch him do it.” He kissed Techie’s ear where it poked out of his hair. Techie laughed, pushing his nose into Matt’s cheek so his glasses jostled.

“Matt... I don’t. I don’t remember the last time I felt safe, like this. And. I mean, there’s still a voice in the back of my head that says... something will come along to take this away from me, but,” he pulled back in Matt’s arms, studied his face, looked him in the eyes, “I want to believe this is real. I want to believe that, even though I don’t know what’ll happen and maybe I’ll be put in prison or be homeless forever... but I want to believe that this, here, is okay. I’m allowed to feel all this. To feel good. With you.”

Matt didn’t know what to say. “I wish I could... fix it for you. I wish I knew what comes next. I don’t, and it makes me—!“ Matt took a deep breath, held it, let it out on a sigh. He forced his shoulders to relax. “I wish you didn’t have to be afraid. I wish I could just, just...” he hugged Techie close again, one arm under his thighs and one around his back, holding him tight. “I wish I could hold you right here. But tomorrow I guess we’ll go to the library and we’ll figure out where the nearest embassy is, and what to do.” He felt Techie nod into his shoulder. “It’s been a whirlwind of a day,” Matt went on, quietly. “And maybe things will look different tomorrow, when we’ve finally slept properly.”

“Is that what you wanna do?” Techie asked. “Sleep?”

Matt began carrying Techie to the bed, figuring he’d decide when he got there.

“I’m pretty wired,” Techie explained, “so I don’t know if I can go to sleep right away.”

Setting Techie down on the duvet, Matt took a moment to look him over. “What are you suggesting?”

Techie writhed on the mattress, trying to get closer to Matt’s body. “Something to wear me out, maybe?” He hooked a foot around the back of Matt’s leg, rubbed it up and down. “I could ride you, if you’re tired. I mean. Only if you. Um. Want to.”

Matt took one of Techie’s hands in his, kissed the back of it chastely. “I do want to. And if you ride me, I can really watch you, you know?”

Techie gave him a curious half-grin. “Maybe in some way, I just, like, don’t want this this day to end. I mean, parts of it were awful, but then, the rest of it is you, and um. It feels like a dream and I don’t want to wake up.”

Matt kissed up Techie’s arm. “That’s okay. It feels unreal to me, too. Come on, let’s try out this new lube.”

It wasn’t anything fancy. The ‘family planning’ aisle at the CVS was not like the selection he’d seen available when he’d stopped into a Walgreens in San Francisco to buy a few bottles of water. But, it was better than hand cream.

“Yeah? I’m probably still loose from earlier.” Techie squirmed a bit, unbuttoning his shorts and struggling to get them off with Matt and his shoes in the way. Matt should’ve thought a man in an oversized t-shirt and red hi-tops, with his cock half hard and rising, would look ridiculous. But, Techie scooted himself across the bed, giving himself room to roll over and hike his hips up into the air, presenting his ass for inspection. “You wanna check?”

Matt made a low sound he hardly recognized, fumbled with the bag from the CVS, and impatiently picked the plastic seal off of the new lube. In his haste he squirted too much into his hand, but he decided to use all of it, slowly warming it before he slipped his fingers slickly up from Techie’s balls to the base of his spine. Techie’s intake of breath was gratifying. His reedy moan when Matt pushed two fingers into him was even better. Matt pushed all the excess lube into Techie, finding him just as loose as promised.

“You could just sit right down on my cock, so easy,” Matt murmured. “Look I can get four fingers inside you.”

The only answer he got was a muffled whine, Techie’s teeth clenched around a mouthful of the bedcovers. His hips pushed insistently into Matt’s fingers, though, eager to be filled.

“Matt,” Techie pleaded, fists curled in the blanket. Matt kicked off his shoes and crawled into the bed, positioned himself propped up upon the pillows.

“You’re plenty ready for me. You want to come over here and get me ready for you?” he suggested, and Techie crawled over to him. The overlarge shirt hung off of him, and Matt could see straight down the line of Techie’s body through the stretched collar. He licked his lips, while Techie reached out, ran gentle fingertips up Matt’s ribs. Then, he pushed Matt’s shirt up, bent to press heated kisses to his abdomen, from his sternum down to his navel, then further to the band of his jeans. He kissed Matt’s cock through the thick denim, and then unbuttoned and unzipped him, pulled him out and kissed up the line of his cock, from base to tip. Matt was most of the way hard already, but Techie worked for that little extra, wrapping his lips around him and sucking him down. Matt’s eyelids fluttered behind his glasses, and he allowed himself a deep, rolling moan. Perhaps Techie was a bit messy at this, a but out of practice, but he was enthusiastic, and his mouth was hot and wet, and he looked gorgeous, head bobbing between Matt’s spread thighs.

“Taste so good,” Techie slurred around the tip. “I’d do this all night... but I’m greedy.”

Matt forced his jeans and undershorts down his legs, pulled his shirt off, resettled his glasses. As soon as Matt was naked, Techie swung a leg over his hips, reached behind himself, and began guiding Matt in, sitting slowly down. His face was a picture of bliss, lips parted, eyes closed, cheeks pink. He was insistent, the press of his body unrelenting until he was fully seated, until Matt was all the way inside him.

“I’ve never been with anyone like you,” Matt confessed, unsure if he’d said so already. “You’re perfect.”

Techie began to move, cock bouncing under the hem of his borrowed t-shirt. Matt reached for it with his lube-slick hand, started by giving him slow, teasing pulls. Techie sucked in a loud, harsh breath.

“Matt, umm, if you do that I don’t, I might not. Mm, oh fuck, might not be able to last long.”

“That’s okay,” Matt began to say, but Techie shook his head.

“No, I’m... already addicted to the feeling of you coming inside me. I want that so bad,” he begged, batting weakly at Matt’s hand while he worked at riding Matt good, taking him deep every time.

“And you’ll get it, babydoll. Even if you come all over me, even if you’re so sensitive it might drive you crazy, I’m gonna fuck your sweet hole until you get what you need.” He gripped Techie’s hips, began to drive him down harder.

“Even, oh, oh fuck. Umm, even if I pass out? Would you still fuck me then, still, mm, pump your load into me, because, because I /need/ it?” Techie’s face was hazy with pleasure (or maybe that was just Matt’s glasses fogging up). He threw his weight down, moaning desperately.

“You like that idea, huh? Me continuing to hold you where I need you so I can fill you with come? You being totally helpless, not even conscious for it, used only for sex?” Matt growled, slamming into Techie rough, hauling Techie’s hips down hard, just to drive his point home.

Techie nodded insistently, struggling to keep his eyes open. “Touch me again Matt, I need it, I’m sorry, I can’t, can’t hold back anymore. I know I said, but, oh oh please, please!” His fists flexed where they rested on Matt’s rib cage, like he was keeping himself from grabbing his own cock. Matt was happy to help, squeezing out a bit more lube into his hand to slick Techie’s cock as he began to stroke him. It meant Techie had to do more of the work riding him, and that he’d start squirming in Matt’s lap, halfway trying to force Matt’s cock deep, and halfway trying to fuck into Matt’s fist. Matt bit his lip, trying to last for Techie, even as he tightened around him, even as he looked so damn beautiful dancing on the edge of coming like that.

“Matt, make, umm, make your fist tighter,” Techie panted, fingers digging into Matt’s sides, the bed creaking under his knees.

“Like this?” Matt squeezed his fist around Techie’s cock, so it was more like pulling than stroking, and Techie made an almost wounded sound as he arched and came, shuddering, grinding Matt in deep. Matt felt it hit his belly and run down his arm. He watched Techie’s face, the way his orgasm consumed him, the way helpless sounds spilled out of him as he rocked himself on Matt’s cock, striving to keep coming.

“Matt...” he sighed, when he was finished, shoulders slumping. “You want me to lie back? You wanna um, like, use me?”

His flushed face, the way he chewed his lip, made him irresistible. Matt lifted Techie off of him, helped him lay back with a pillow under his hips, slipped his hands up under Techie’s shirt and then smoothed them down his sides, his hips, his thighs. Techie breathed out a contented sound, let his legs fall open for Matt, closed his eyes. He looked ready to accept anything Matt would give, so Matt slid his hands under Techie’s knees, opened him wider, and guided himself back in as Techie hummed a low, sweet note of satisfaction.

With Techie’s hands up above his head, his hair spread out in a messy halo on the duvet, his limbs limp and yielding, he looked almost pleasure-drunk. Matt swallowed, wondered about what Techie had said earlier about being fucked while unconscious, how he asked to be used, offered himself for Matt to do whatever he wanted. Would he really like that, coming to and riding himself loose and slick, Matt’s come sliding out of him?

Matt sped his pace, imagining Techie reaching down to feel the evidence for himself, fingering Matt’s come into himself, feeling it between his fingers, his cock hardening as he pictured what had been done to him while he was passed out. He’d fist his cock, on his back, still in the same position as he was when he woke up, letting the soreness of his hole illustrate how hard and rough he’d been fucked, how he’d been handled like a doll, moved around for Matt’s pleasure. Matt groaned, thinking about techie liking it, about him coming over his own fingers at the realization of being used while he was helpless. He knew it was fucked up, but in the trembling moments before orgasm, that didn’t matter. What mattered was how hot and wet and willing Techie was, under him, the quiet sounds of pleasure that bubbled out of him as Matt continued to fuck him deep, the way he was completely relaxed, pleased to give in, happy to be at Matt’s mercy.

“Mm, Matt... fill me up,” he mumbled, exhausted.

“Yeah, babydoll,” Matt answered, voice harsh with exertion as he pounded into Techie. “You’re barely conscious, can’t even sit up, and you still want my come. I bet I could roll you over in your sleep, slide back into your loose, wet hole, make you cream the sheets, and you’d wake up happy.”

Techie moaned, his spent cock twitching. “More than happy. I’d be so filthy, covered in come, lying in dirty sheets...” He smiled softly, eyes still closed. “Might start expecting to wake up like that.” 

Matt groaned, felt his balls tightening, snapped his hips hard against Techie’s. 

“I’d wanna,” Techie yawned, “stay ready and open for you always, so you could just, mm, yank my shorts down whenever and work a quick one into me. I’d always be going around with your come in my ass.”

Matt jolted, coming so hard he saw spots, nearly blacking out himself as he held Techie down to milk his orgasm out into Techie’s body. He didn’t recognize the sound he made, low and desperate, chasing a higher peak with every ounce of his remaining energy. Techie crooned through it, thoroughly satisfied, and let it happen.

Matt stayed inside him a long time, coming back to himself, softening, until he sat back and slipped out. He heaved an exhausted breath.

“You’re gonna wear me out,” he griped, blinking sleep away. He felt like he could pass out right where he sat. “I’m gonna be like Lord Byron, malnourished and dehydrated from too much incredible sex.” 

“Hmm, sounds ideal to me,” Techie mused from his sprawl on the bed. “Can you get me a towel or are you too tired?”

With the determination instilled in him through BCT, to keep moving even past the point of exhaustion, Matt slumped toward the bathroom and collected the towel from the bathtub. It was already a mess from their earlier antics, and he resolved to rinse it out at least a little before they checked out in the morning. He helped Techie clean up, removed his shoes and rearranged him to lie back against the pillows so they could finally, finally sleep.

“Tomorrow, the library,” Matt whispered, spooning up to Techie’s back, nuzzling into his hair. Techie didn’t answer, and from the steady rise and fall of his chest, it appeared he’d dropped off in seconds, comfortable, worn out, and peaceful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, there's the first four chapters. I don't have a specific update schedule for this, and will attempt to finish it in between updates of From Raw Materials.


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